


Alexandria the Child Vampire

by evenstar8705



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:35:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 84,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21564655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evenstar8705/pseuds/evenstar8705
Comments: 3
Kudos: 1





	Alexandria the Child Vampire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InikiMelset](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InikiMelset/gifts).



ALEXANDRIA THE CHILD VAMPIRE  
Prologue  
The ghoul walked into the restaurant with his master’s message and the camera that Stefan had expressly ordered he take with him and use. He was supposed to be looking for the Guardian of Chicago, but his Master had failed to describe anything about this new and powerful vampire. He had not included any information about their age, gender, or any hint of a physical description.  
Eventually, a red-headed child waved him over to a table as far out of the way as possible for privacy. An intimidating man sat with her. He was tall, muscular, with long and shaggy blonde hair and dark eyes that glared dangerously back at him. He must be another ghoul because the messenger didn’t sense that the presence he felt dimly came from him but the little girl instead.  
There was no mistaking the feeling a vampire caused. It caused the little hairs on a man or woman to stand up and a cold, creeping sensation not unlike a spider teasing its way up the spine. Ghouls, on the other hand, were mere mortals that borrowed the strength of their vampire masters at their whim.  
“Come over here, stranger,” the child said. “Sit beside me, not the ghoul. That’s right. I’m the one pulling the strings here, the small fry! The man that beckoned you over certainly does look old and decrepit. How old do you think he really is?”  
The ghoul was shocked. The voice coming from the child sounded too mature and he had not expected to meet another ghoul. Vampires didn’t commonly use people like them anymore. He guessed a number knowing that he was almost certainly going to be off the mark.  
“Fifty-five, oh you are wrong! His name is Gus and he is thirty-eight. Angel dust and ice tend to do that sort of thing to a man. Anyway, here is a trickier question: How old am I?”  
He gazed into the child’s almond brown eyes and noticed an unnatural glow there. Coupled with the voice, he surmised, “You’re no child. You look like a ten year old, but that can’t possibly be.”  
She laughed boisterously, “You are quicker than most! I’m not ten, you got that correct! Though I look like a ten year old, I am actually about to turn a hundred and ten years old very soon! Surprised? Well, get used to it! My story is bound to keep surprising and horrifying you. The reason I find it necessary to tell you these things is because you may be of some use to me. We’re in a nice restaurant so of course I’m not going to give myself away by biting your neck or whatever else you might imagine. No, I won’t lift a finger, but Gus will silence you if necessary. He has killed for me before. Not only that, he has gotten away with it.”  
The ghoul remained silent and asked if he could take a picture of the Child Guardian. She didn’t think much of the request and allowed it. He wasn’t sure if there was another quite like her, certainly not appointed to such a high status by the Council. At least the most crucial part of his mission was done. This would certainly peak his Master’s interest and he might be well rewarded for gathering this sort of vital information. A story to go with the picture would be a nice bonus.  
“I was told you could help me find what I’m searching for,” the child-vampire began, “and I know you are simply a messenger, but you’ll have to relay everything I say to your master, who I am very excited to meet, by the way. He needs to know what sort of creature I am before he reveals himself. That’s fair. He is far more ancient than me.”  
He supposed that must be true.  
“Here comes the waitress. Better just order something to avoid suspicion. Gus will eat it, don’t fuss. I suppose you want me to start with the moment I became a vampire? I’ll go farther back, and trust me, there is little enough before that. Just look at me. I’m something that should not exist and the fact that I do angers our kind, saddens mortals, and makes the angels weep. I am Alexandria, and I am a child vampire.”  
My Maker Vito wrote an extensive biography about his mortal years. He would have kept a journal and written daily while he was a man if he had only known how to write. He was illiterate until he became a vampire and constantly whined that he became literate too late and it was important to remember that all our kin began as humble mortals and the experience was impossible to relive. He was a man in his prime when he was embraced, though, and so he had much more to recall and write about.  
I was only ten when Vito claimed me from the little lambs dying in an overcrowded hospital ward. I learned in school how to write by then, but I have experienced one of the shortest mortal lives of any vampire and remember precious little. Memory is a fickle thing. The brain will embellish some details and leave other memories by the wayside to decay and disappear.  
Now that I have lived ten times my mortal span of years, it almost seems to me as though I had never been human. That time was instead more like the incubation period of a human fetus in their mother’s womb. Not even the most outlandish writers and charlatans pretend to remember what it was like in the womb.  
Well, I do remember some details, and they are more important than I can begin to imagine. A person’s childhood is vitally important for how they look at the world and treat others. I believed that sort of thing even before I read the works of Freud. What I did not remember, I researched later. I was born in 1908 christened Alexandria Filice. In Italy, I would have been named Alessandria but my parents wanted to assimilate. My schoolmates and friends just called me Alex.  
My mother was relieved that I was born after my parents landed in America. They were Italian immigrants and she had been pregnant on the voyage, mistaking her morning sickness for sea sickness until the doctors at Ellis Island examined her. My mother’s family had a fine vineyard in the farmlands near the city of Reggio Calabria but much of the soil had been going bad in southern Italy for years.  
My father was some petty criminal that brought some of his activities with him into the new country. When the infamous Messina earthquake struck, they were safe in Chicago and I had been born only a few days before. My parents took it as a sign that God had put the thought in their heads to immigrate just in time. My mother was young and got a job in one of the tailoring shops. Father was always between jobs.  
My childhood memories consist mostly of running rampant through the Chicago streets when school was out or whenever I wanted to play hooky. I avoided my father because I was always in trouble with him. He complained that I should be at work in a shop and forced me to a factory once. I ran away the very first day.  
School was bad enough so I determined to make money my own way. I learned to pick pockets and to find unguarded caches of food. My father must have known I wasn’t really working, but as long as I handed him a nickel or two when pay day came around, he never asked where it came from. I knew better than to ask how he could afford his bottles of whiskey, so it was a fair trade.  
Another place I frequented was the parish. The priests were kind and even my father had to behave. My mother was devout so she insisted we go every Sunday and every holiday. It was one of the few places she ever went to outside the home. She prayed for children and was always trying for more. I can’t recall a time when she was not in some stage of a pregnancy, but she never carried them much further than the second trimester. She did not come only to pray and weep for the souls of my doomed siblings.  
There was always good food at the parish and loud and boisterous company. She would hug and kiss friends that gathered there and jabbered in Italian at them. Some of the older Italian Americans tried to teach me a little of my mother-tongue, but it was mostly the bare bones basic words and cuss words. In school, I was supposed to learn English, not Italian.  
I don’t remember being considered a good student or particularly bad one when it came to the class work itself, but I was getting a reputation among the other children, especially the children out on the streets. The streets between Polk and Taylor were my haunt in the Near West Side of Chicago. My family lived in one of the tenements nearby.  
I was easy to spot since I had a mop of red hair and even though many folks passing by assumed I was an orphan boy, I was actually the best thief in our little territory and ran my own sort of gang.  
My secret was that I had a friend among the night men. He was an older gentleman and an immigrant himself. He was from Eastern Europe, I never did figure out where exactly, and the man was very reluctant to talk about himself. He was a grandfather and too old to be chasing kids like me, but he was still built like a bulldog with the jowls and bark to match the look. It must have been what got him his job. He would bring me peaches and chocolates sometimes and would warn me if some less friendly officers were about or any real criminals.  
As for my gang, it was a rag-tag bunch made up of orphans, newsies, and first or second generation immigrants. Although most immigrants tended to stick within their own ethnic groups, I didn’t care so much as long as the kid could grunt and point to communicate their needs. We banded together for protection, to gather resources (steal) and have fun. That fun occasionally involved minor vandalism and noise. My reign only lasted a few months, but I had the potential to become like the Dodger in Oliver Twist. I might have also landed in jail, though, so maybe not.  
My muscle and closest friend was a boy from Russia named Michail. He signed his name in school as Mike for assimilation purposes but his family and friends called him by the nickname he had used in Russia too, Mickey. Even though he was only a couple years older than me, he was the tallest boy in the gang and had the most vicious slug arm. He started out a rival for my leadership until he found out I was a girl. After that, he made sure nobody messed with me. He struggled to pick up English, so he needed me to do all the talking anyway.  
He was quiet and sullen, not violent, and he was never anything but kind to me. He had wispy blonde hair and pale blue eyes that I actually really liked. Looking back, I think he was the closest thing I ever had to a sweetheart. He had an older sister I had the privilege of meeting once. She spoke English surprisingly well and was astonished when I told her that Mickey rarely spoke more than two words in Russian or English at me a day.  
“That’s two more words than we can ever get out of him!” she said with a shrug of her shoulders.  
One of the few things that my father and I liked was the picture shows. The movies were silent at the time but my favorites were the films about Indians. They were heroes, not the noble savage or bloodthirsty monsters Hollywood would paint them as later. It was great fun to imagine myself a native in a small canoe fishing peacefully out in the wild, then battling torrential waters with nothing but an oar and my wits. I tried to imitate their ritual dancing.  
My mother thought the movies were entertainment for sinners, but we didn’t care if it was. My father did not care if the movie was appropriate for a child my age, he dragged me along anyway, and I was happy to be dragged along! We watched Tarzan of the Apes, Charlie Chaplin films, Westerns, anything and everything.  
The last film I remember seeing with him was The Vamp. It was a rerelease of the film starring a fem fatale, not an actual vampire, which was a popular trope of the era. The crowd was lively and I clapped when it was over.  
“Don’t grow up to be like Nancy,” my father said after the film.  
“Why not?” I asked. “She got the German spy in the end. She is a hero!”  
“She could have done it without vamping!” my father wrinkled his nose. “Do me another favor and don’t tell your mother I let you see this picture. Don’t tell anyone, not even Father Kyle at the parish.”  
It turned out that as far back as the early 1900’s; people have been outraged by the very idea of a fem fatale and haven’t changed their attitudes much over a hundred years later. My father bought us some supper as a bribe for my silence. This was one of the few fond memories I had of him.  
We went home to mother who was still pressing laundry. Some of the laundry was bloody and an older woman was helping her for once.  
“Where have you two been?” she demanded. “You better not have been in the South Side of the city! Some of our fellow Italians have been getting into it with all those black people that have been coming into the city in droves recently! There is talk of race riots!”  
“I just took the girl out for some supper. Is that a crime?” my father complained. “You want me to spend time with the kid, or not? You confuse me, woman, which is all that you are good for!”  
“Oh yeah, and how much did you spend on that supper? You haven’t brought any money home in weeks! I am tired and sick-“  
As my parents began to row like cats and dogs, I slipped away to go find Mickey. I walked down the street to find him out in his yard, struggling to yank a tomcat out of hiding. The cat was spitting and hissing, but Mickey was cooing and calling to it in Russian as though it were purring and begging to be pet. He was so distracted I gave him a dig with my shoe to get his attention.  
“Mickey, let’s go paint the town!” I shouted.  
“Uh!”  
Mickey banged his head against the side of the shed and pulled himself out between it and the crates the cat had wiled its way into. He looked longingly at it before he obediently followed after me. His silence after hearing the racket of my parents was actually quite refreshing.  
“Shall we get some of the others?”  
Mickey shrugged.  
“No, I guess you are right. What do we need them for?”  
He gave me a shy smile.  
“Is there anything you want from the store? I want to get something nice for my mamma. Maybe you want to get something for your mamma or your sister?”  
He looked thoughtful.  
“Point it out to me or just go ahead and take it then. I don’t care.”  
The shopkeeper was a portly man and terrified of children and fell for the same trick every time. Mickey and I chased each other recklessly around the shop and ran as though we were going to knock over merchandise and shelves. Once the clerk went after one unruly child, the other would grab items and stuff them into our pockets.  
Of course, we could only snatch small parcels. We were not bank robbers robbing a bank and the worst that would happen to us if we were caught is that the watchmen would force us to return the items. It was harmless and easy pickings. We caused just enough chaos that the owner couldn’t even guess what, if anything, we took.  
“I got some of those Veribest canned foods that my mamma likes. We were running low,” I announced my spoils. “What did you get, Mickey?”  
He raised some head cheese in one hand with a smug smile and then blushed when he held out an item to me in his other.  
“What is this?” I asked with surprise.  
It was a candy bar.  
“Nice one. Your sister will love it.”  
He shook his head and offered it to me again.  
“Thanks, Mickey!”  
With the gluttony of a child, I took the candy and gobbled it up. It was after I ate it that I said, “But that was all that you got? Here, take one of these cans.”  
Mickey looked like he was about to say something when a woman came stumbling by with a severe cough. She was hacking so badly and so loudly that it startled us both. Mickey even made that strange sign of his that looked like maybe it was the sign of the cross, but if it was, he was doing it backwards.  
“Mickey, you are embarrassing me!” I groaned. “The sign of the cross is done this way, dummy!”  
I demonstrated the proper way for him and he stared with a puzzled look on his face. I was convinced he still didn’t get it and sighed in exasperation.  
“You might as well have a sign on your back saying you’re a foreigner! Never mind, you are hopeless! Now you should go see if that cat is out of hiding and give that cheese to your mamma. I think my parents might be wondering where I am. See you tomorrow, Mickey!”  
“Dasvidanya!” he waved back.  
My parents were still fighting when I got back, and it was past my bedtime. I placed the cans of food in our pantry quietly and was in bed half asleep when my mother came in.  
“You and I need to say prayers,” she said, bringing out the rosary.  
I snuggled with her and recited my prayers dutifully, all the while chuckling to myself and anticipating her face when she saw the presents I brought her the next morning. 

Well, as I said, it was a very short life. 1918 is when influenza broke out in our beloved, dirty, and overcrowded city that we called Chicago no matter what language we spoke at home. I remember walking by signs in street shops and the parish door in particular warning people to cover their mouths with cloth and to immediately go home if they felt ill. Doctors were busily walking the streets on their house calls.  
My watchman said anyone seen coughing was to be dragged off the streets as though it was a capital offense. Few people took the signs and warnings very seriously the first few weeks, but when the newsies began shouting that people were dying and dying quickly from the flu, they began to take note. The adults were concerned at least.  
When three men stopped to buy a paper from one of my boys, I heard them grumbling, “The world is at war and now we have this to deal with! If only they would close down the factories and shops for a few days. I could use a holiday!”  
“Good for you, pecker-head, but I can’t afford not to work!”  
“Where do you think the flu came from?”  
“Well, they’re calling it Spanish flu so maybe some Spanish leeches straight off a boat brought it with him.”  
“Nah, I heard the first cases were at the Great Lakes Station. Probably some seaman at the Naval Training Station porked some Spanish broad and spread the sickness!”  
“They haven’t closed the schools yet, but no way is my boy going to get sick. As far as I’m concerned, he isn’t going to school until this all blows over.”  
“Who is going to watch your kid then, ignoramus, if you have to work and he isn’t in school? They don’t want to close the schools because then everyone’s brats are going to be playing in the streets where they are even more likely to get sick!”  
“I’ll make my wife stay home.”  
“Look at this guy! He’s hoping to get off work and has a wife that can stay home!”  
“It’s because I’m a born American citizen, not a foreigner or son of a foreigner, thank you very much.”  
“What are you, some kind of prince? Make way for the prince of Chicago, everyone! Make way for the prince of the city deepest in dirt!”  
When the word got round that the schools were not closing but all the adults were paranoid of this strange sickness, a lot of kids plotted to fake being sick. My friends hid pepper in their desks and snorted it to cause coughing fits. The teacher sent three students home the first day but quickly caught on to the prank. Those that were home already lucked out though. They got to stay home for a week.  
By October, the schools were closed for real and most kids that got sick never caught it at school. I certainly didn’t. I caught it from my mother, probably in a loving but deadly kiss goodnight as she tucked me into bed, struggling not to fall asleep before I did.  
When I woke for breakfast the next morning, I felt a tingling sensation in my fingers and went to tell my mother I was not hungry after all. She was already half-dead and was in no state to cook me anything. I wondered at first if it was a symptom of yet another failed pregnancy until I saw her pale face and heard her ragged breathing. Then I began to panic.  
“Mama, mama, get up!” I shook her helplessly.  
She didn’t answer. My cognitive abilities were dampened by my own illness and I crawled into my mother’s arms and clutched her.  
The thing about the influenza epidemic that still puzzles the medical world to this day is that it hit healthy adults worse than anyone. There’s a theory that the illness did something to immune systems so that the stronger the victim’s system, the worse they were off. I suppose it must be true. My family usually bounced back from being sick quickly, and I do not remember being seriously sick before that all my life, which is quite miraculous for the time and state I lived in.  
By the time my father returned home from whatever he had been doing at noon, both my mother and I were dying. He took one step in the door of our hovel and smelled the sweat and heard the wet coughs and retreated back out and left us forever. It was a neighbor that came by when they saw the door had been left open that took us to the hospital.  
County Cook hospital was overwhelmed, even with recently expanded wards and the volunteers that flooded in to aid with the epidemic. My mother and I were separated and she would die hours later. I was stuffed in the children’s ward with tons of other kids. There was only one real nurse that seemed too exhausted for her own good and that was bad for her patients. A volunteer was giving out medicine.  
“Where is my mama?” I squeaked.  
“Keep your mouth covered. Do you want to breathe more of the flu everywhere?” the aide snapped.  
I opened my mouth to protest and they squirted nasty tasting medicine inside. I lay in bed and hoped mother would come for me soon. For once, I would have been glad to see my father.  
The world began to get hazy and the crying of the smaller children became soft, dull whimpers. I was drifting in and out of consciousness. The staff’s voices became low murmurs that sounded like they were coming from under water, yet the scraping and creaking sounds of the hospital wheelies and carts were like sharp cat claws dragging across my skull and dragged me out of any chance of getting peaceful rest. The bitter aftertaste in my mouth was rancid and did nothing that I could tell except made me even more thirsty than I was.  
I lay there for hours until my tongue was numb and my mouth dry as doldrums. I was shivering violently under a scratchy, thin blanket. It was October and freezing, and it was not only the weather that was cold and unsympathetic. There was screaming when some brat that was somehow feeling better began crawling around the ward, being as much of a nuisance as humanly possible while the staff was gone from the room. He poked and prodded the near comatose and stole blankets from patients, including mine.  
If I had been able, I would have knocked the little imp to the floor and stomped on his balls, but I was too weak and drugged.  
“Mickey,” I called for my friend. “Mickey, get that stupid boy for me! Mickey. Mama.”  
The nurse ran in and started yelling. She had company with her, not a volunteer. It was a man with shoulder-length red hair and stubble of whiskers on his chin. He had brown eyes that were large and gave me the impression that he was compassionate and warm. He looked and dressed a little different than the priest I was used to at the parish, but in my child’s mind, he appeared remarkably like Jesus in the paintings. The only difference between them was that he had red hair instead of the brown or blonde you usually see.  
As the nurse scurried about barking and trying to assume some semblance of order, the priest wandered the room, giving water to some children and last rites to others.  
When he came to my cot, I summoned all the strength I could to speak to him. My mother had always taught me that priests could help with almost anything since they were agents of God and we are all believers when we are young.  
“Father, I want my parents. My mama came here with me. My papa has not come to see me. Is he with my mama in another part of the hospital? Is she feeling better?”  
“What is your name, child?” the priest smiled the most gentle smile I had ever seen on the lips of a man.  
I gave him my name and the names of my mother and father. He beckoned to the nurse and parroted my questions at her.  
“The mother died this morning,” she said as though she had answered the question a thousand times and as if I had been told that many already. “The father has vanished. All attempts to contact him have turned up nothing but cockroaches saying that he is out of town and they don’t know how long. It’s probably a mercy that the girl is dying. Give her the last rites and be done with it, will you? We are running out of bedding.”  
With that she turned and left as I lay in the hospital’s precious cot, stricken so badly by all that she had said I couldn’t even cry. The priest gazed down at me with all the pity she had lacked.  
“Am I dreaming, father?” I whispered.  
“I am afraid not, child. Do you have any other family? Are there brothers, sisters, or an aunt or uncle? No grandparents?”  
“I have half a dozen baby brothers or sisters that are unborn. They’re all in purgatory. All my relatives are in Italy and I’ve never seen them. My papa left us. Why did he do that?”  
“Cowards naturally fear death. They fear most everything in life too. Do not worry. I will not leave you, child.”  
“Pray for my soul, father,” I said, expecting it to be my last words as I closed my eyes.  
I was as ready for death as I could be. Then the priest rested a hand on my head. I felt him as he leaned down near my ear. I expected him to whisper the Latin mumbo jumbo ritual in my ear. Instead, I felt teeth slide into my neck. They hurt worse than the medical needles and I felt weaker and weaker. I didn’t think that was even possible. I half-heartedly struggled, but it took him zero effort to keep me still enough for his ghastly purpose.  
At least my death will be to a vampire instead of some stupid Spanish flu, I thought bitterly.  
Just as the world began to grow dangerously dim, he put his wrist to my lips. I didn’t know he was offering me blood, but it tasted far less revolting than anything the nurse had given me. I honestly thought it was iron-tasting water like he had been offering the other children in his gourd. I sucked in as much as I could manage. I had been excruciatingly thirsty.  
A light like a stab of white-hot lightning flashed behind my eyelids. I felt a strange burning and pulling sensation under my skin. This was much more than fever. I opened my eyes and saw the priest’s lips red with my blood and his wrist still extended to me, dripping drop after drop. The sight and sensations were too befuddling to process. Instinct seized me instead and I snatched his wound back to my mouth with an inhuman noise.  
“I wasn’t sure if that would work!” he seemed pleased and not at all alarmed. “Ouch! Not so much, Alex! I have not fed yet tonight. This is just my hunting ground for the time being. It’s just too good to pass up! Easy meals everywhere! I saw you, though, and I didn’t have time to feed properly for this. Take some blood from someone else for now.”  
“Someone? Someone else, not elsewhere?”  
He gestured all around the room and said with a touch of sadness, “Take your pick. Death is written on every little face here. What passes for a staff is in no condition to save them. The volunteers have no idea what they are doing, handing out the wrong dosages, blood types, forgetting to wash needles and hands, generally spreading infection and flu rather than curbing it. They mean well, they just had no idea what they were really in for. The nurse removed the only healthy child here.”  
I groaned with irritation. He must have meant the nurse took away the little shit that stole my blanket. He was the only person I had really wanted to kill.  
“What are you waiting for?” the priest noticed my hesitation. “You have to feed! Especially now! If you do not feed, you will undo the work I have just done! Try not to spill a drop and they won’t even think to look for any other form of death than: By Spanish flu.”  
“How do I do it?”  
“Oh yeah! Your fangs are not growing in quite yet. I am sorry. I have never done this before and because of your age and size, this is going differently than I read. Here, I’ll help you.”  
He grabbed the nearest throat, bit it, and then shoved my face into the fresh gash. I didn’t even think of the moral implications or mind the smell or anything as soon as I saw the blood. I was beginning to feel the first stirrings of true thirst. The vampire was still a priest to me. I trusted him without question, and he had pronounced the victim before me dead already. I wasn’t quite convinced I wasn’t having a sick fever-dream. I drank deep.  
As the moment passed, the taste of the blood became richer and richer and better and better. In fact, I wanted to shred the child to pieces and lap everything up. I felt some strength revitalizing me. I began growling like an animal.  
“Stop!” the priest had to pull me away by seizing the hair of the back of my head. “Stop before the heart stops. Move onto another and don’t spill!”  
I drained two more children and might have gorged myself on a dozen more, but the priest must have heard the nurse returning. He ripped me from my meal and from the bed, dragging me to the window. He held me, squirming and roaring in one hand, swung the window open with his other, and leaped over the sill, taking me with him. We fell I don’t even remember how many stories.  
The impact seemed to rattle my new Maker, but there was no sign of real injury whatsoever and he recovered smoothly. I was still very weak, drugged, somewhere in-between living and dead, and full of the blood of three drugged and dying children. My legs felt heavy as lead, but my Maker carried me effortlessly down, down, underground into the sewers of the city.

I must have succumbed to all the drugs or the transformation had overwhelmed my tiny body, because my Maker woke me the next night.  
“Where are we?” I asked.  
“What does it look like, the catacombs of Rome? We are still in the city of Chicago, just under it. I hope you don’t mind the smell of night soil. It’s preferable to corpses, I think.”  
“What is night soil?”  
“An older term for shit, my dear.”  
I giggled at that, but the mood quickly changed to a more serious and ominous one. I gazed at my Maker, not even knowing what that term was. He was dressed in his priest garb, but now that we were down in near total darkness, his eyes were glowing in a way that made his gentle almond-colored eyes look like orange-red embers. The only light was an oil lamp he had set beside him, the only noise the wretched water draining and channeling through the cisterns and pipes.  
He had been writing in a leather-bound book with a fancy fountain pen. The tip of the pen was gold and his handwriting looked absolutely gorgeous. He was writing in a foreign language and I did not have the familiarity or education to guess what it was or who he was.  
“You must have questions,” he spoke after a lengthy and uncomfortable silence. “But first, let me introduce myself. My name is Vitalo, but you can call me Vito. I was from Italy originally, Montaione, to be exact. Your parents were Italian, no?”  
“Yes.”  
“Well, someday we must learn from where they hailed. I didn’t foresee that coincidence. I didn’t foresee anything to be honest. “  
“You’re not a priest!” I pointed at him angrily.  
“Oh, but I am. I have been ordained as a priest by dozens of churches in half a dozen languages and countries. I am a Catholic priest, a Jesuit priest, a Protestant minister, a Zoroastrian priest, a Buddhist monk, a Muslim imam, a rabbi, and most importantly, a priest of Lilith and Cain.”  
My head was spinning at that. I hadn’t even heard of the latter things he mentioned.  
“You can’t be all those things!” I insisted.  
“I assure you, I am. A priest is merely a person that knows the rituals of an order of a religion and acts as a mediator to a deity of some kind.”  
“So you don’t believe anything! And you are a vampire! You are the servant of the Devil!”  
Vito shook his head, “The Devil is one of the few things I refuse to believe in. Evil was born in human hearts and they invented demons and devils to blame anyone but themselves. You are a vampire now. Not only are you a vampire, you have killed already. Does that not make you an agent of the Devil?”  
“But I-I-“I sputtered, my mind racing with everything I had been schooled on good and evil. “I had no choice! I didn’t know that was blood you were giving me!”  
“Fair enough. I didn’t give you a very clear choice. For that, I apologize. However, you drank from three children to sustain yourself.”  
“You said they were dying already!”  
“What if I lied?”  
“I didn’t know!”  
“Try that one on pure, precious baby Jesus if you ever see him!” Vito laughed hysterically.  
“No, they were all dying like me. It was a mercy.”  
“You are a Catholic. Most Catholics believe extinguishing any life for any reason is a sin. Your mercy was actually evil with a kind face.”  
“No!” I howled. “Take it back! I don’t want to be a devil! I don’t want to go to hell!”  
I began to sob and Vito comforted me, “You were baptized and an innocent child. You should have been well protected by God from something like me. What can you deduce from that?”  
“What does ‘deduce’ mean?”  
“I am asking you: What can you tell me that means?”  
“God must be punishing me for being a bad girl.”  
He slapped me, “No! I am punishing you for not using your brain! The only conclusions you can deduce is that either God doesn’t exist, he doesn’t care about his children, or you were born to become a vampire. Which one of these options do you like best?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“Well, my child,” he smiled triumphantly. “You may have eons to figure that out.”  
“Eons?”  
“A long, long time. You will never die a natural death. Stay away from fire, bombs, and sunlight for a good while. The sun won’t kill you, but it will weaken you and hurt so much that you might as well avoid it, especially as a newborn vampire. Oh, and never tell mortals what you are for obvious reasons. It may be best not to tell other vampires. Actually, you might just want to avoid others of our kind entirely.”  
“Avoid other vampires? But that doesn’t make any-“  
“Come!” he grabbed my arm, interrupting me. “We need to feed.”  
“Where are we going? To the hospital?”  
He stopped and slapped me again. “What did I say about using your brain? As unlikely as it may seem, someone there may recognize you. They know me there, but I have established a fragile trust. I help the children with a chance get better and weed out the dying ones. I am very good at what I do, but you would destroy what I have going. Priests never let little girls just follow them to dangerous places like that and I just know that you would screw something up!”  
“Then where are we going?”  
“Wherever our noses take us.”  
We went out into the streets. My Maker had to grip my hand tightly to keep me from wandering off. The streets seemed so much more interesting than they ever had been. The sights and sounds were amplified by my senses. The strongest of all was the scent of blood. I could hear heartbeats too.  
“Do you hear abnormal beats?” he whispered through a clenched, toothy smile. “That means do they sound weak or have a funny rhythm?”  
“Yes!”  
“Follow it.”  
It took us to a dark alley where a man sat dejectedly drinking moonshine. He was alone, trying to hide on purpose.  
“You see?” my Maker’s smile became genuine. “The blood and beat calls you. Only thing to do after you find them is to make sure no one witnesses.” We already had the victim isolated, but I hesitated. “Go get him!”  
“He’s stronger! He’s bigger!”  
“You will never be intimidating, dear, but that’s why you’re ideal! No one will suspect you are the predator, a wolf in lamb-skin! Vampires are always stronger than mortals. Think of him more like a big cat or dog now. He’s drunk and weak to boot. The heart beat gives him away. Now do what you know vampires do!”  
He practically shoved me toward the man and I realized we would be standing there all night if I didn’t at least try to do as Vito demanded. After a second, I decided I would probably fail this little test miserably anyway so I approached him warily.  
I expected him to lash out in defense, knowing what I was and what I was about to do, but he lifted his head when he saw me and seemed half-awake.  
“You’re a pretty little girl,” he muttered. “What are you wandering around here alone for? Are you lost?”  
I didn’t just look scared for a show. The man reeked of garbage, sweat, and beer. He was an older man, but stout and giant in size compared to me. When I spoke, my voice was shaky and I told the first lie that came to my head.  
“My mother is sick. My father is dead. You look like him, mister. May I have a hug? I miss him so much.”  
“Well, why not? I had a son once. Looking back, I’d have traded that bastard for a daughter.”  
He held out his arms, exposing his throat, entirely clueless. I nestled near and then latched. He struggled, but to my surprise, I could hold him without much effort. The first taste of blood wiped my mind clean of all thought and I heard only heart beats and wind whistling in my ears, not the man’s cries or the traffic of the city.  
For a moment that seemed to go on and on. Only those senses mattered. I closed my eyes while I drank and felt the sort of satisfaction humans feel when they take a drink of an ice-cold beverage on a hot day or the pleasure of a hot and hearty meal on a frigid night. When it was all over, I felt wobbly and strange.  
“What is wrong with me?” I asked when I nearly tripped and fell on my own feet.  
“You are drunk!” Vito laughed and pointed.  
“How?”  
“The man’s blood. He was drunk enough that the blood transferred the effect.”  
“Oh, so this is what drunk feels like?”  
I felt a slight buzz and I was seeing in doubles. I kept stumbling. Now I understood a little bit why my father had enjoyed his whiskey so much but I also remembered his mood turning on a dime when the hangovers set in.  
“Am I going to get sick?”  
“You mean vomit and get headaches? No. Your organs are self-regenerating now because the only thing they really need is fresh blood. As long as you have that, your liver, stomach, intestines, all of it will treat the poison that humans call alcohol like harmless water.”  
“What else can I get out of blood?”  
“You mean what can you get transferred? You can experience drug effects and even disease. Luckily you will only carry the disease for a few hours and feel nothing of the symptoms. You might transfer those to humans though, so be careful.”  
“Do I have to kill them?”  
“If you want a decent meal, yes. Mastering the sampling technique takes experience and delicacy, too much for most vampires to bother. You also risk exposing yourself. That’s why I personally seek out the weak and dying like a true predator. There are some vampires that seek the strong, the beautiful, even the infamous. They turn hunting into a grand sport or game. I don’t approve.”  
“How often must I hunt?”  
He studied me a moment, thoughtfully. “For a newborn like you, you will need to feed every night for the first few years. After a decade, every other night, after fifty years, every three or four days. After a century, you may only need to feed every fortnight. As time goes on, you’ll need it less, but still crave it.”  
“Centuries?” I was incredulous. A year seemed like forever to me.  
“Of course! You can also feed on animals in emergencies.”  
“If that’s so, why don’t we just hunt animals?”  
Vito’s expression became serious. “Because animal blood is not satisfying. A rat will only ease the suffering for a few minutes. Even something as big as a horse or cow is just not the same. Also, farmers and horse owners tend to notice a valuable animal missing. Men like the one you just fed on all too often go unremarked. There are murders and deaths every night in a large city like this. Feed on the riffraff and men like him and try not to feel too guilty, Alex. Trying to be noble and limiting your diet to animals often does more harm than good. Imagine a human trying to live on only grains of rice and potato peels.”  
“Yikes!”  
“What an appropriate response, Alex. Eventually that person will become too weak to function and will perish. They will do that or go mad with hunger. A vampire that is starving risks exposing himself or becoming such a beast they break into a home and slaughter whole families in one night to glut themselves with blood. I have seen it happen.”  
I nodded, but I could not stop looking at the fresh corpse, my thoughts churning in all directions. He was throwing so much information at me and the dead man’s eyes looked like glass staring back at me.  
I told him he looked like my dad! Why did I even say that? And he hugged me! Me! Why was he so stupid? No. He was not stupid. In his last moments, he was trying to be kind, not stupid.  
Vito was going on about something else, but I could not hear a word. I let out a sob and burst into tears. I surprised myself. I clung to the poor man I had killed until Vito pulled me away.  
“Hush, Alex,” he said gently. “Seems like you have had enough for today. We have lingered near the body too long anyway.”  
Because he was actually being nice and not slapping me, I slumped after him. Dawn was not far off, so Vito decided we should sleep. I expected a coffin bed, but he pointed me to blankets and a pillow.  
“We don’t sleep in coffins,” he must have seen the look on my face. “Not by choice, anyhow.”  
Sleeping in bedding helped me feel normal and so I gradually calmed down and slipped into dreamless sleep.  
The next night, Vito shook me awake. Some thieves were wandering near our lair and made a convenient meal for us. Since I knew they were criminals, I had no qualms feeding and cheerfully helped Vito discard the bodies into the sewage.  
“Well now that’s done what would you like to do? We got a little pocket money from them. We could afford to see a show or something.”  
“Why are you asking me?”  
“Why not?”  
I was pleasantly surprised. As a child, I wasn’t used to the adults asking me what to do. Back then, they didn’t really care to indulge the little people’s every whim. My father largely ignored me and my mother had been kind but often too busy. I had to rack my brain for something to do, half-certain Vito would reject anything I suggested.  
“I want to go to the cinema,” I said finally.  
“Oh, that sounds delightful!”  
He took my hand and off we went. Vito had never seen a moving picture before, so he didn’t mind watching hours and hours of even the dullest pictures. He almost forgot the sun was rising outside. He grew to love the cinema even more than my father had. Like my father, he also didn’t seem concerned with what I saw.  
Every evening afterward, it became our ritual: Vito would wake me, we would go feed, and then he asked me what we should do. I can count on my hand the few times he ever said no. I was quickly adjusting to this life. With each kill, I gained more skill and felt less guilt. In my mind, it became no different than the mortals that went to market every day haggling for animal carcasses slowly rotting and wafting in the open air on display.  
And Vito was like every child’s fantasy of what they wanted their parents to be. We saw every movie multiple times. We toured every inch of Chicago. I thought I knew the streets when I was mortal, but now I knew it better than the back of my hand. We saw live performances on the streets as well as inside the snazzy buildings. I was living the dream!  
But I had a rude awakening when the circus came to town. I was having a blast! We watched the clowns run around the ring, then the gymnasts leading the elephants and lions. After the show, there were all sorts of sweets and snack vendors. There was even an early cotton candy machine. I squealed at the sight. I had never had cotton candy in my life and when Vito wasn’t looking. I bought some and stuffed a sticky, cottony handful into my mouth.  
I had not eaten a morsel of food for nearly six months. I had never craved it and barely given a thought to it. But now I had swallowed food and instantly regretted it. As soon as I swallowed, I felt queasy and the candy itself had no taste, only a dry texture. I began to gag immediately.  
“What is the matter with you?” Vito demanded.  
Turning, he saw the cotton candy in my hands. Then he snatched me up and ran me to the nearest trash can barely in time. I began to vomit up blood with tiny clumps of what had been blue cotton candy stained a red so dark it almost looked black. Vito patted my back and looked around us at the people staring.  
“She got into some red wine,” he said lamely. “She will be just fine.”  
I felt like I had thrown up everything that could have possibly been in my body. My insides and throat burned and felt sore. I had little streaks of blood tears in my eyes.  
“Oh, look at that, I cut my finger on this bottle!” Vito exclaimed to no one in particular and pressed a bleeding thumb to my lips. Instinctively, I sucked up a few drops, though it was hard. Some of the burning and pain in my stomach subsided instantaneously.  
“Why on earth would you be so stupid?” Vito rasped in my ear. “You are not a little girl anymore! You can never eat food again! You will taste nothing, digest nothing, obviously grow ill, and now you have to feed for a second time!”  
“I just wanted to try some candy! I didn’t-“  
“Now you have learned the hard way, haven’t you? Come on, Alex.”  
We went inside the fun house that was full of a maze of mirrors. As vampires, we still do cast reflections, but it was easy enough to snatch a teen boy and sate my thirst and leave without so much as a whisper from us or a whimper from him. I supposed they would find the boy’s body, mistake him for a prop until he began to smell, and then declare him scared to death.  
With fresh blood, I felt mostly restored, but instead of a belly ache, my heart ached now. I watched children around me eating cotton candy with no horrific side effects. They had parents holding their hands, friends and siblings to annoy them and play with. They looked so joyful and carefree. I slowly realized I would never have these things again. I suppose I had already known, but the fact had not quite hit home until this very moment.  
As though he could read my thoughts, Vito sighed and took my hand, “I must show you something.  
“Fine.”  
Our steps eventually led us to the local cemetery. There was no funeral, but the gravediggers were burying someone. They stopped their work to take a smoke break. Rain had begun to fall, so they walked a few yards away to put a mausoleum roof over their heads. Vito shoved away some earth and opened the heavy coffin lid so I could catch a glimpse of the occupant. A mortal certainly couldn’t have done that with his strength alone.  
The woman inside was freshly dead and made a beautiful corpse. She was not particularly young or old. She was dressed in her Sunday best with fake pearls around her neck and earbobs. The ring around her finger was the most impressive thing she was buried with. It was a wedding ring. She must have had a husband that loved her very much or was still alive, grieving somewhere. Perhaps she had left behind children? There was no headstone yet, so we didn’t even know her name.  
“What is the meaning of this?” I snapped impatiently. “Is this a woman you knew?”  
“No. I just want you to realize that it could be you dead in this coffin.”  
I turned my gaze to Vito. I had never seen him look so sober and talk so seriously before. For the last six months, he had been more like an older playmate than a Maker. I realized I knew very little about him and he rarely had moments like this. I needed to listen carefully to his every word now.  
“Alex, you must understand that it is frowned upon to make a child vampire. I have never made another until I saw you and I never imagined the one I would make would be a child. You were dying. You may remember that the nurse had all but announced you dead already?”  
I nodded, recounting the bitter memory.  
“I am afraid many vampires grow to resent their Makers. Some vampires treat their offspring like slaves. They might not give their fledgling a choice to be a vampire. Others are benevolent and never make a vampire unwillingly. I did not really give you a choice, Alex, and I am sorry for that. However, your only other choice was this.”  
He pointed to the woman in her coffin.  
“But there were other children dying in that same room!” I said. “Why did you pick me?”  
Vito seemed to hesitate before he answered, “There were many reasons. I will name a few of them: You conveniently had no family that would come looking for you or you for them. You have red hair and Italian lineage like me. You can easily pass for my daughter. Lastly, I saw something in you. There have been very few moments in my life, mortal or Undead, when so many pieces come together and a single moment or choice has true purpose. I seized that moment.”  
“But what is that reason or purpose?”  
Vito smiled, “We will both learn that in time.”  
The gravediggers were out of smokes and the rain was letting up. Vito closed the casket and threw all the earth piled up into the grave and we made a break for it. He had done half the work for the diggers. I was amazed again at how fast and strong he was. He rarely displayed his power, just as I still didn’t know the extent of them or how old he was. I never thought to ask before.  
“The point I am trying to make, Alex, is that there are times you will wish I had left you alone to die. You will pine for what could have been. To have had a life: Gone to school, grown up, fallen in love, had a family of your own, grown old with someone. Those things I did not rob from you. But your death, I did take that. We vampires don’t know what comes after death. Maybe it really is the end. Maybe you would have gone to heaven. Maybe you would have come back a fruit fly. You may never know, thanks to me. At least you will not age and die like that woman. You might have a long Unlife ahead of you or a short one. I guarantee you will have troubles. As your Maker, I hope you live a long and happy Undeath.”  
“What about you?” I finally asked. “Did you end up hating your Maker and living a happy Undeath?”  
“I’ll tell you what you need to know,” he promised. “Tomorrow. There is a crack of light on the horizon that says dawn is calling.”

He told me the basics about himself the next evening, like he said. He was an Italian peasant during the height of the Black Death. He was past middling age. He had raised sons and a daughter. His wife had died along with the last wee’un. Many of his children and grandchildren died of the plague. Some survived. He managed alone in his little shamble house, not always well, but he was still alive. Half the population of all Europe couldn’t say that.  
Late in the night, he had a visitor. The man showed no signs of sickness and was well dressed. He said he was on his way to the nearest abbey but needed to stop and rest. Vito invited him in. If the man had come to rob him or murder him, it was not worth the effort. All he had was cheap ale, tiny turnips, and runty radishes. He offered what he could but the stranger did not partake.  
“I hunger for words and thirst for companionship,” he declared.  
“That I have plenty of.”  
The two found themselves talking about religion, complicated Italian politics, philosophy, anything but about the Black Death. The stranger did not get a wink of sleep, and Vito did not nod off either. He managed to impress his guest when he asked if he could read some of the books he kept in his great leather bound satchel.  
“How does a peasant learn to read?”  
“Self-taught. For a time I brought a few trade goods to the abbey. I pored over their library. Hate to admit, I stole a book or two. They had plenty of copies. I have read them dozens of times. Perhaps you could return them for me?”  
The stranger laughed; flashing the fangs he had kept well hidden before and said, “You shall return them with me! I insist! I have been in need of an assistant for some time now.”  
Vito’s guest was, of course, a vampire merely looking for an easy meal. Lucky for him, the ancient one had found his conversation engaging and admired his determination to seek knowledge. When he offered his blood Vito accepted with little reservation. He had never paid to get out of purgatory anyway, and he had always had his doubts about the Roman Church. Also, he might have always been a bit mad.  
The blood restored some of his lost youth and all of his vigor. He gained more speed and strength than most. His Maker was one of the Elders and one of the Keepers of Knowledge. He devoured books. He learned seven languages. He wrote chronicles about his mortal life and kept a journal documenting his Unlife. He stood out as one of the more enthusiastic and insatiable of all his Maker’s ‘children’. He traveled the globe, joining the priesthood of every religion he could worm his way into. He also attained the priesthood of Lilith, one of the proud and ancient orders consisting exclusively of vampires. His dedication meant that he went weeks without feeding and focused only on pursuit of knowledge and wisdom.  
But after a century had passed, he slowly fell out of favor with his fellow peers and the Elders. He began arguing that the creed and teachings having to do with Lilith had been corrupted or purposely lost. He attempted to access forbidden scrolls and texts. He wrote theories that were controversial and dangerous. They began to call him mad. His Maker quietly disowned and released him.  
Vito was something of an exile, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. He was now free to continue his search for writings of Lilith and to deepen his understanding of mortals. If he was going mad, at least the voices would be keeping him company. As long as he broke no laws, the Elders couldn’t bother him. He told me that he had no regrets.  
“What happened to your human family?” I asked.  
“I dropped in on them a few times when I was a young vampire. I had a son and a daughter that survived long enough to give me grandchildren. But as years passed, I became engrossed in other things and I didn’t want to arouse suspicion. My descendants became harder and harder to track as they married or moved. My son’s branch of the family married a woman that carried another man’s child so I stopped following them and traced only the female line. Now I am afraid I have completely lost touch with them all. I had a family tree that had meticulous detail on each baby born with the date of birth, name, and a brief record of their life. My Master found the whole idea a waste of time and misplaced it. Shame.”  
“Is it possible you might be my great-great-something?” I had mixed emotions at the thought.  
Vito smiled at me warmly, “Possible, but not very likely. The last one of mine I remember no longer carried the red hair trait and left the old boot of Italy in the seventeenth century or near to it.”  
“Why didn’t you make your own daughter a vampire? Or a friend?”  
“You mean friend as in mate?”  
I nodded with a blush.  
“My Maker and Elders would have had to approve. Unless our population dwindles, there are all sorts of standards and steps. As for mates, I prefer books. I had a wife when I was mortal. After all these years, never met her likeness again.”  
“Could I make vampires?”  
Vito looked surprised, “You could in the future.”  
“When? How?”  
“The when is not up to us. The how you should already know from your own making. I told you I was only telling you need to know things, so move on to another question.”  
“Who is your Maker?”  
“He is one of the Elders.”  
“Was he Roman then? Are all vampires Italian then?”  
Vito roared with laughter, “We come from all over, dear! Most of the vampires I ever met were actually from Eastern Europe. Why do you think Russians and Polish have so many tales of vampires? They are expansive lands with isolated villages. The cold never bothers us. They were ideal hunting grounds for the nomadic vampires.”  
I suddenly thought of my little Russian boy and all my old friends. My father’s image also flashed across my brain and I scowled.  
“What is it, Alex?”  
“Can I call you father?”  
“Well I am a priest!”  
“No, I mean can I call you dad?”  
I had never seen Vito look so uncomfortable before. He wrung his hands and I began crying blood tears.  
“Don’t be hurt, Alex!” he tried to explain. “It is just confusing because you are not my child of flesh but of blood only. You are my fledgling, not my offspring. I have not had a child in centuries, so I think playing a role like that again is impossible for me. Besides your real father would be very hurt.”  
“So? I hate him! He left my mother and me to die! I want to find him and kill him!”  
Vito looked horrified at the suggestion. I was surprised. I was sure he would have seen it as a fun game, as hunting had become for us. My father surely deserved it, and Vito and I were vampires! Hunting people, especially bad people, seemed to be our entire reason for being.  
“Alex, do you realize that used to be what vampires did all too often?” he snapped. “New vampires grew jealous of their family because they were still alive. Others were angry their relatives forgot them so quickly or couldn’t prevent their becoming Undead in the first place. I acted as a sort of guardian from afar for my family, but I’m bat-shit. Vampires wiped out their entire genetic lines and that is what caused the vampire hunting crazes. Many of our kind were hunted and destroyed but countless more innocent mortals were mistakened for vampires and murdered. Hundreds of thousands of fresh corpses were mutilated to prevent vampires and old cadavers were dug up and burnt. Imagine this massive desecration of the dead in times when millions around the world believed a person’s body must remain intact in order to reach the afterlife!”  
“Is that true?”  
“No! Use your brain, girl!”  
“Well my father is my only family. I’ll kill him and make sure there are no witnesses.”  
He slapped me and I charged at him, fighting back.  
“I’m a vampire!” I screamed. “I can kill him if I want to!”  
“You are a fool!”  
Vito tossed me aside as though I were merely a stack of papers. The force of hitting the wall knocked the wind out of me. “Thank God,” Vito loomed over me as I gasped for air. “Now I can explain this while you can’t interrupt or attempt violence. You will forget your father. You will not pursue him or talk with him. You may not kill him. If by some miracle you had a change of heart and simply decide you miss your daddy and forgave him, you can still never go anywhere near him! As your Maker, I forbid it!”  
“But why?” I managed to regain myself. “If I promised not to get caught-“  
“The moral implications.”  
“Mortal?”  
“Moral. It means that would be a grave evil.”  
“What?” I laughed “Evil?”  
“I know I told you to abandon much of your former religious practices and beliefs, but I didn’t mean to throw away all of your sense of right and wrong! I am and always will be a priest of Lilith, and while I yet live, I will not let you violate her tenants!”  
“I don’t know Lilith!”  
“With time you may. If you are to live with me, you must know a little. Trust me; you cannot survive on your own.”  
I knew he was right, so I pouted and said, “Fine! What do I need to know then?”  
“Basically just these things: Vampires kill only for sustenance or self-defense. Killing someone or ending your own life cheats all of the ultimate goal of existence: To learn. Pain and joy, hedonism and self-neglect, you learn best experiencing them as often as you can. That’s why Lilith is called Sophia by the Gnostic Christians. In Greek Sophia means wisdom.”  
“I don’t care about these things! I don’t even know what you are talking about!”  
“Admitting you don’t know is good, but don’t say you don’t care in my presence. Pretend and obey until you do. You are young and the Priesthood of Lilith is exclusive to our kind, and even then only to the most ancient and elite. If you truly hate your father, take solace in the fact that he is mortal and he will age and die. You will not for a long, long, looooong time, I hope.”  
I pictured my father in a grave, decaying and being eaten by worms, but then I thought of my mother in the same predicament and I was sad again.  
“I wish you had found my mother and changed her too,” I whispered.  
Vito softened and asked, “Do you have any other questions?”  
“Will I meet these Elders you keep talking about?”  
“Best not. They are actually a very boring lot of old buzzards. If they were convinced you were alone and had no Maker, they’d also probably kill you on sight.”  
“But why? What in the blazes did I do to them?”  
“Exist, dear. Child vampires are only kept as pets by their Makers. They can never survive on their own, and they are a great risk for exposing the species. There have been a few exceptions, but I’m almost certain you are one of a kind. Be proud!”  
“So we won’t be meeting any other vampires?”  
“The Elders meet and congregate every year, but all others are supposed to keep themselves to small groups. There are mass gatherings, but only when summoned for some grand announcement or purpose.”  
“And what if a vampire goes bad? What do the Elders do?”  
“They send out hunters, judge the guilty, and burn him or her at the stake. It has to be a serious crime, and because vampires are so scattered and secretive, some vampires escape notice for a long time. Unless the idiot is making a big spectacle of themselves.”  
“How do they know crimes are committed?”  
“There are Elders and their information dealers in major cities and ports. They see and hear and use vampire powers to keep a sort of census of vampires in their area. If you find another vampire, Alex, you will feel it. You will feel them even better the stronger and older they are. I’d avoid even the weak ones. Our kind is defensive of our territories. Elders keep a careful watch on the young ones when they find them since they are most likely to break the rules. Older vampires are not so easy to intimidate and hunt down.”  
“Shouldn’t I know which Elder watches Chicago then?”  
Vito smiled, “Luckily for us the American cities are laxly guarded. Oh, New Orleans has an established Elder, but America is far too big and uncultured for ancients. They cling mostly to their more aristocratic and European territories. The agents they send are often new bloods. We are safe here. Only places safer would be places like the Gobi desert or the Arctic, but there’s no prey either. But stay away from Mexico! There have been powerful vampires down there for longer than the Elders care to admit. There are several places in the world that don’t have anything to do with them or predate them. They have their own unique rules or no rules.”  
“No rules? Sounds awesome!”  
“Silly girl! No rules can be worse than the strictest set of rules!”  
“I don’t believe that!”  
“No?” Vito raised an eyebrow. “Ever heard of the Aztecs and the Mayans? Sacrificial cultures are the result of vampires thinking they are gods and demanding tribute from humans. Superstitious and primitive mortals make that sort of thing a tradition long after the vampire is gone. If you go to rural Mexico today, some of those monsters still exist and prey on younger vampires when they can!”  
I gulped, “Alright. Maybe some rules are nice to keep around.”  
“Just stick with me, Alex. I am strong enough to protect you in most cases, and clever enough to deal with the rest. If you are ever alone, trust no one. Americans don’t believe in rubbish like us, but they are still paranoid and violent creatures. If you sense another vampire: Run! Don’t wait to see if they are friendly. If a vampire is calling out for help, don’t believe it. That is always, always a trap to lure weak and naïve vampires.”  
“But what if they really need help?”  
He slapped me, “What did I just say?”  
“Why are you so mean?” I pouted.  
“So you don’t end up dead! Ever seen what happens to lion cubs that stray from their mothers and get discovered by a male lion? If it’s not their own father, he kills them! Vampires are a lot like lions.”  
I was starting to feel overwhelmed by the information again. Vito could tell.  
“Neither of us has fed. Let’s go Alex.”  
Despite Vito’s commandment, I was, of course, still determined to kill my father if I ever found him. It stung a bit that Vito wouldn’t let me call him my father in his place, too. But, in the end, I decided he was better than a father. He was my Maker, mentor, my mad hatter, and I was Alex in Wonderland. I put all the things he said into the back of my mind. I was young still, and with youth, there is always incredible stupidity.

Vito and I spent half a year treating Chicago like our personal paradise. I began asking Vito what he wanted to do, but I regretted that almost instantly. He enjoyed gazing at paintings and sculptures, visiting the museums and libraries. The library wasn’t so bad because I could always find something for myself to read. On Sundays, we visited a different church each week. There, he would debate with the priest or minister and exchange news, pray, and even give blessings and take confessions.  
“Why do you play along with this priest business?” I demanded. “You don’t believe in it and we’re vampires!”  
“On the contrary, I take theology very serious!”  
“What? But isn’t that-that-uh-“  
“Contradiction,” Vito finished for me. “You have been looking up words in the dictionary! I am very proud of you, Alex!”  
I blushed a little at the rare praise, “Well, I read all the easier books. I’m getting to some good ones, but they have more and more big words.”  
“So now your vocabulary is expanding. I told you reading has all sorts of hidden rewards. Anyhow, no, I don’t consider my attitude to religion a contradiction. Practicing as a priest, taking confession, giving communion, it brings me closer to my prey, not only simply for hunting but for understanding. It reminds me when I was human seeking answers, seeking a soul, a God, for a hint of anything divine. Humans have been searching for meaning and order in the universe for thousands of years. Religion helped uplift the species at our dawn and it will be with us until our dusk. I guarantee it! Us vampires aren’t much better off. Oh, I don’t practice the more absurd things, but I find value in almost every religion and their deities. It’s my dream that one day, all the religions of the world will blend and meld and evolve into one great spiritual philosophy.”  
“They are all too different,” I insisted.  
“You say that because you were raised Catholic and have never been exposed to Buddhism, Islam, or ancient Greek myths and Indian folklore. Here is a challenge for you, if you are up to it: find reader friendly books on creation myths. Focus only on creation, but every version you can find. Tell me if they are so different once you have a basis for comparison.”  
I accepted the challenge. I had hated reading in school, but he had baited my curiosity and competitive nature. Willful children love to prove adults wrong.  
I had severely underestimated the task. I had no clue there were hundreds of different cultures with hundreds of myths on such a specific subject. I knew there could be hundreds more that I couldn’t find in the libraries. After weeks of scrutiny, Vito asked for a progress report.  
“List the best examples off the top of your head!” he commanded.  
“The Egyptians believed a Sun God created everything. One story called him Ra, another Aton, another Ptah. The Greeks and Romans had tons of giants and monsters before the gods, but everything came out of Chaos,” I still didn’t understand half of what I was repeating. “The Norse said something about an Ice Giant dying and giving birth to life. The Chinese had a myth about a great egg cracking open and gods coming out. There were trickster gods like Coyote, gods giving birth with no partner, dead gods, dying gods, sky beings, I can’t remember everything!”  
“Good. Now do you see that many of them have the same themes? We’ll use the typical Genesis God for the basis of comparison: First there is nothing, then suddenly something! Chaos, darkness, empty water, some versions mention only demons. Then suddenly a single deity that gives birth to others! Or, they get the whole creation over with and they’re done, like the Ice Giant or Egg. The appearance of the Deity is almost a cosmic accident but in stark contrast the creation of life is a very benevolent well planned and executed thing.”  
“I suppose.”  
Vito chuckled, “Study more and give it time, you will begin to see these things for yourself.”  
I shook my head and gave up on these great pursuits of wisdom he was pushing me toward. I kept reading the more juicy myths like the Greek myths only because I was so bored. Then one day I stumbled on the name Lilith, the same one Vito seemed so crazy about. What I read horrified me.  
“How can you call yourself a priest of Lilith?” I tossed the book at him later that night. “She is a monster that eats children!”  
“You mean like a vampire?” he responded with a grin. “Have you forgotten your first meal so soon?”  
“There were no adults in the room!” I snarled.  
Vito hooted with laughter.  
“It’s not funny!”  
“Child, that is not the real Lilith you are reading of in those passages. That is how mortals that feared females as much as they did vampires painted her! Besides you’ve said before that you didn’t care to know anything about her.”  
“Oh, I’m a priest of Lilith, an evil bride of Satan!” I mocked him. “And it’s a super special evil little club you can’t understand!”  
Vito continued to smile a maddening smile. I couldn’t stand to look at him anymore. I turned for the door.  
“Where are you going, Alex?”  
“To feed without you!”  
“I suppose you are capable. Do be careful, though.”  
I snorted with derision and went out into the streets. I allowed myself to become the wary, solo predator. Just in case Vito went out to hunt, I strayed from our usual hunting grounds so I wouldn’t run into him. I wanted to savor my kill in peace. I eventually prowled near a dinky brothel.  
The first human that wandered near was one of the workers. She was muttering to herself, panicking because she was pregnant and couldn’t decide to keep the baby or not. I let her pass in case she decided to keep it. The man after her was piss-drunk with his fly still hanging open. I was eager for the bonus of booze in my veins.  
A little inebriated from the fresh kill, I almost didn’t notice that the next mortal that came out of the brothel door was my father. He was drunk as well, and he was cursing at the prostitutes.  
“You’re all uppity and crazy thinking that I would pay that much for the likes of your broads!”  
“And you’re too drunk to keep it up, you Wop!”  
“Hey, Jim!” another shrill voice rang out. “Get your friend out of here or so help me, I’ll kill him.”  
Another man appeared to help my father, but he shoved him away, “I’m not too drunk to get home!”  
He began to stumble away. Once he was out of sight, I approached Jim.  
“Sir? Sir, do you know that man?” I asked.  
“Yeah, we work together. Who wants to know, kid?” Jim leered at me.  
“Tell him his daughter didn’t die,” I spoke slowly and clearly. “Tell him Alex will meet him at home tomorrow night.”  
Jim’s gaze didn’t soften, but he said, “I admit, you sure do have his red mop. I’ll give him the message.”  
“Thank you!” I sang sweetly and hopped away like a little bird.  
I followed my father’s trail at a distance. I was curious if my dad would actually be happy at such news. If he proved a coward or Jim failed to deliver my message, I’d just go to my father’s hidey hole. He went inside a shack eventually. I made a mental note of the location and returned home.  
“It is good to see that you had a successful hunt all by yourself,” Vito didn’t look up from his book when he spoke. “No trouble, I hope?”  
“Oh no,” I was grinning from ear to ear. “I think I’ll hunt alone for a while.”  
Luckily, Vito seemed less than interested. I wondered if he had even fed.

As soon as the sun was down, I set out for my revenge. I knew Vito would disapprove if I simply killed my father. Death was not good enough for him and I didn’t want to experience the taste of his blood. It was already part of me and there was nothing I could do about that. I had a much better plan.  
There had been more outbreaks of the Spanish flu since I had it. I followed the heartbeat of a stricken person. It was a beat growing fainter by the minute so that I almost lost him. His death was as sweet as I could make it. In his delirium, I hoped that maybe I looked like a little angel carrying his soul to heaven, not a demon cutting his life short. I bore him no ill will. I was, in fact, grateful for the little bonus gift he gave me. After I drained him, I hurried to find my father. I knew I had only a little time.  
To my surprise, he was waiting for me, sitting on mamma’s bed. He burst into tears when he saw me and made a pathetic sobbing noise that irritated me and disturbed me all at once. The smell of booze was strangely absent too.  
“Alex, my Alex!” he cried. “Come to papa!”  
I gave him such a hateful look; I knew that I must be a fright. There were no lights but the vampire gleam of my eyes and I parted my lips in an unapologetic snarl. He looked confused instead of terrified which only added to my annoyance.  
“What is wrong? I have missed you so, my only child. I’ve had no one!”  
“You haven’t asked about your wife and my mother.”  
“Is she alive?” his eyes flickered.  
“Would that be a joy, a relief, or an inconvenience?” I demanded. “After all, mamma wouldn’t be very happy with you. You left us both to die and have been paying whores since then! Why did you bother to come see me? Morbid curiosity?”  
“I left you both. I did. I was scared.”  
“Scared? Scared!” I howled.  
I bounded toward him in one leap and bit into his neck. He still didn’t seem to comprehend what was going on. I latched, but took no blood. All I needed to accomplish my revenge was to sink a single fang in. He rubbed his neck.  
“Why did you do that? Did you just bite me? Did the fever make you insane?”  
“I’m a vampire, father.”  
“A what?”  
“I’m a vampire!”  
He shook his head and squinted at me.  
“Did it occur to you that it’s almost been two years and I haven’t aged, you idiot! I was only ten, just shy of eleven. I should be almost thirteen! I should be growing into a woman! You left me, but a vampire adopted me. I drink blood every night now.”  
“Alex, you are sick. Let me take care of you.”  
“I’m not sick! I told you, I’m dead! And that’s what you will be too, father! I fed on a flu victim before I bit you. I’m immune but can still carry diseases for a few hours. Now you’ve got it!”  
He didn’t believe my vampire talk, but he understood what I meant by flu. My father finally looked panicked. He grew ghastly pale and slowly backed away from me.  
“What did you do?” his voice was shrill.  
“I gave you Spanish flu. I decided it was the best way to kill you. Now you’ll know how mama and I felt.”  
“I have to get to a hospital!”  
“Oh, no you don’t!”  
I had planned this well, or so I thought. I tied him to a chair, the same chair he had always sat in smoking a pipe while my mother slaved over dinner. I had boarded the windows and locked the doors. My father was beginning to perspire and his skin was pale and clammy to the touch. They were from the sickness as much as fear.  
“They say if the flu is going to kill you, it kills you quick,” I told him with glee. “Especially the big men in their prime like you. Vito and I had a neighbor of a sort. He lived in a house above us. He was just fine that last afternoon. By evening he felt unwell and went to bed early. By morning they had taken his body away already. I will stay here with you and watch you die.”  
“Alex, you must get me to a hospital or call a doctor. Please,” my father begged. “You can’t do this to me! I’m your father! I promise to be the father I should have been. I always thought of you as more a son than a daughter! Your mother wouldn’t-“  
“What’s wrong with daughters?” I snapped. “Just shut up and start dying!”  
He kept blubbering, bargaining, pleading, and making that initial sound that I couldn’t stand. I wanted to snap his neck. I wanted him to sound more sincere, not desperate. I wanted him to believe me when I told him what I was. I wanted him to suffer more. I began to wonder if this was all a mistake. My father had to die, but maybe I had chosen the wrong method.  
“Here!”I showed him my fangs. “See what I am!”  
“You’re my child.”  
“Not anymore. I am Vito’s child. I am a vampire fledgling.”  
I ran his fingers along the edges of my fangs. He still didn’t want to believe.  
“Even if you are the monster that you say you are, Alex, you’re still my daughter.”  
After that, he got quiet. I felt his brow. He was burning up. He started begging again a few hours later, but now he was only asking for water. I had an impulsive thought about giving him blood instead of water. That would be a cruel trick. If I made him a vampire, he would have to believe my story. I could turn him and cut him loose with no instructions or explanation. He would suffer a great deal more.  
I shook myself from that nightmare of an idea. My father had been a terrible human being. He would be an awful vampire. If I left him to his own devices, he would get caught in a week and expose Vito and I. I was doing the human world and the Underworld a service taking him out of it now.  
“Have you ever killed anyone?” I blurted out the question. “You can’t have much longer, so you might as well confess your sins. Vito is an ordained priest, but he is not here. I will have to do.”  
“What?” his voice was weak. “I’ve killed a few men while robbing them so they wouldn’t squeal.”  
“Vito and I share a few victims some nights to keep our kill-count down, but not so much lately. I’ve been a vampire over a year. Three hundred sixty-five days and we feed near every night. So yeah. Hundreds.”  
“Did you say hundreds?”  
“Did I stutter, old man? I am a vampire. I kill people almost every night. I am dead and I am a vampire and it is your fault!”  
As I raged, he was becoming less and less responsive. I needed to pass time somehow, though, and it was morning when he finally died.  
“I hope you suffered as much as mom did, you bastard!” I slapped his face. “At least you had someone familiar in the room with you! Maybe I should have hidden nearby somewhere. Well, see you in Hell!”  
I opened the door to go outside. Vito said the sun wouldn’t kill me, after all. I wanted to get back to our lair so he didn’t wake to find me gone. He might not have noticed my absence right before dawn, but I didn’t want him getting suspicious. The sunlight seared me. It was painful enough that I retreated back inside. I also felt a little ill. I had never been up during the day as a vampire before. I saw now why our kind didn’t do it. It was miserable!  
“I’ll have to wait for some cloud cover,” I said to myself.  
I lay down for a nap.

I slept much longer than I had planned. It was pitch black outside. I ran out of the house without a remorseful look back. I snatched the first person I saw to feed and rushed home.  
Vito was waiting for me. He looked as though he had swallowed a lemon.  
“Ah, there you are, Alex! Let’s go hunt! I’m famished!”  
“I’ve been hunting.”  
“You made sloppy work of it. I see some blood on your sleeve.”  
I cursed at my clumsiness.  
“You did not return last night,” Vito declared.  
“Oh yeah?” I challenged. “How would you know, you dusty old bookworm! You barely seem to know I exist!”  
He grinned, and the grin scared me more than his frown had, “Is that what you really think?”  
I was too nervous to snark back this time.  
“I know what you have done.”  
My heart leaped into my throat and I looked around wildly for a moment. I don’t know what I expected Vito to do. I just knew I had never been so terrified of anyone, not even my father, up to this point. Vito let some time pass, savoring my fear. Then he pulled up a chair and gestured for me to sit as he sat in his own chair across from me.  
“We must discuss exactly what you have done. Now.”  
I slouched into the chair.  
“Your father succumbed to the sickness you gave him by now, I take it?”  
“Sometime during the day hours.”  
“Are you satisfied with what you have done?”  
I thought about it long and hard. I was a little disappointed honestly, but I wasn’t sure what Vito wanted to hear. I was sure he had a long lecture prepared with precise questions and answers required. I was still afraid of how he would punish me, but I also couldn’t help feeling confused and angry.  
“I didn’t go looking for him,” that was no lie. “I was just hunting and found him drunk in a brothel! I was so angry! It was like mother had never mattered to him and that he was enjoying not having a family anymore. All his green dough could go to booze and women. He should have been at home grieving us or in a church somewhere or anywhere but here! How could I possibly just walk away?”  
“Alex, I do not know your father. Well, never knew, I should say. It sounds to me like he was doing anything but celebrating that his family was gone. You laid a trap for him. I was watching you the whole time. He wanted his little girl back or he would not have returned to that house.”  
“He needed to pay for abandoning us! He killed my mother and me by leaving us behind. Why can’t you admit that part is right? It was the flu that killed him, not me. He tried his best to escape it, but humans die all the time due to illness and any and every number of reasons. It was his fate.”  
“You gave him that flu and imprisoned him so he could not get treatment. I admire the method, but it was still murder. You do recall that I lived during the height of the Black Plague. That epidemic made this pitiful Spanish flu seem like a mild cold. Do you have any idea how many people came home to find their families all ill and dying? There were more than can be counted! Everyone became animals and gave into their fight or flight instinct, except there was no fighting death. I was tempted to abandon my whole village.”  
“You didn’t!”  
“Maybe I did,” his voice was flat. “Ever wonder how I survived?”  
I shrugged.  
“It was because I lived in a tucked away corner of my village and fed all the feral cats, that is why. The pope had declared cats the familiars of witches and devils, but I couldn’t tolerate rats in my larder. I have never seen a bona-fide witch to this day, but I can’t tell you how many times I went hungry as a mortal thanks to those damn rats and God wasn’t rewarding manna down from heaven to those faithful that poisoned or killed cats. I didn’t dare admit I was caring for the cats in case a Christianly neighbor reported me so none stepped inside my hut, but neither did those vermin. I kept a roaring fire going at all times because I was getting on in age and hated the cold. These were all just odd habits of mine. But who knew it was the fleas on those rats causing all that death?”  
I breathed with relief, “So you were a good man, but those that left were bad.”  
“They also survived the crisis and kept Europe’s population from being completely decimated. Do you realize your father could have had a good life if you had left him alone? He might have remarried and finally given you a living sibling. That would have been worth overlooking his cowardice.”  
I snorted, “A half sister or brother with some whore instead of my mother? Why would I want that?”  
“Half or whole, it would have been a human connection. Most vampires don’t have that and so most vampires go mad or turn into something dark and unnatural. Now if something happens to me, which it will, you have no one. You will have nothing to live for or to die for.”  
“But what would happen to you?” I asked with alarm. “You said not much can kill us.”  
“Plenty enough can. You know that most vampires never make it to triple digits in age? They go insane or fall victim to other vampires all the time. A few get caught by mortals and have no choice but to destroy themselves or expose the race.”  
“If you are going somewhere and are so worried about me why don’t you make me a sibling?”  
“You mean make another vampire?”  
“Yes!”  
“If vampires reproduced as they do in the folktales and horror novels, the human race would have been long gone by now. We can only make a vampire after the creator has recovered. It takes a lot out of us and years must pass, sometimes decades, to gather the strength and will to do it again. The Elders prefer a vampire only reproduce once every fifty years minimum.”  
“Fifty years!”  
“That gives the creator the ideal time to pass on all his traits to the new vampire, otherwise the fledgling gets cheated. They will not be as fast or strong as they could have been and sunlight can kill them.”  
I gulped, “I suppose I was lucky that you waited a long time to make me then. Thank you.”  
“You needed it. Your tiny body absorbed a great deal, but you will not be a match for most other vampires until you see at least a century go by.”  
“So I can’t make a vampire for what, ten years?”  
Vito snorted, “If I were you, I’d never attempt it. You realize if you made anyone past puberty, they could never take you seriously? Also, if you don’t wait at least fifty years, you might very well kill the person in the attempt. You would need someone to adopt you or become master of manipulation and hiding to survive on your own.”  
“Don’t you know any good vampires? Would they all really just kill me?”  
“Vampires can be just as unpredictable as our human progenitors, Alex. We are capable of incredible kindness and cruelty. In the end, we are killers first,” Vito flashed his fangs on purpose.

Gradually, as years passed, I realized that I was not a child anymore. I do not know when or where it happened. A human girl could say it happened when they got their first period or perhaps when she graduated school or left home or the first time she had sex with a man. I did not have any of these rituals to experience. Physically, I was and always will be a child. What would have been my fourteenth birthday came and went.  
I did not age, but I was beginning to think less like a child. I watched young women walk by in the streets and followed them just to see what their lives were like and had an urge to imitate them as much as possible. I changed my style of dress with the times and tried to fashion my hair accordingly. I had grown a bit bored with Chicago, especially since I no longer found childish things fun, and that seemed to be the true sign that I was growing up.  
Vito and I had seen and experienced most of what we could of the city. It was an exciting time, don’t get me wrong. The roaring 20’s was getting underway. New clubs, especially jazz clubs, shops, and cinemas were sprouting up like weeds. Wrigley Field opened, and the windy city is never truly dull, but I was running out of things to suggest we do whenever Vito demanded it. We had seen every moving picture dozens of times, toured all the old parts of the city and all the hot spots of the day.  
There was a lot we simply couldn’t do, like see day-time shows or day games, much as we were excited about baseball and our home team. Vampires are about as thrilled by restaurants as most humans are thrilled to visit the morgue, and even feeding was becoming a trite chore. I dived more and more into books and observed humans like a modern child observes their television sets and computer screens.  
One day, I decided to play a prank on my Maker and test his limits. He woke me one evening and asked his usual question.  
“What shall we do today?”  
“Let’s go to China!” I said, expecting him to say no for the first time in such a long time, I couldn’t even remember.  
To my surprise, he nodded and replied sagely, “It is not good for a vampire to remain in one place for too long. Not only do we risk becoming a suspect to murder thanks to our thirst, or a neighbor catching on to the fact that we never age, we risk madness. Vampires inevitably grow frustrated when their familiar surroundings change over time. Their friends die, the politics seem to change quicker than the weather, and they resent their own countrymen for not feeling the same. It is an invaluable learning experience and makes one appreciate their home even more. When we get back, it will probably feel like an entire new lifetime. We may have to change our names. I personally don’t settle down in a city for more than a few years unless I get bogged down with financial matters or there is some sort of ban I can’t get round. I spent my entire mortal life never leaving my village. I like to think I have made up for that now. I have visited practically every known part of the globe.”  
“You are actually serious? We can go to China?”  
“Of course, it was your own idea. What is the matter, Alex?”  
“It’s so far and so-“I struggled to find the right words.  
“Oriental? Rustic? Backwards? Foreign? Come on, the more foreign, the better the learning experience!”  
He took my hand and we immediately went to make arrangements. Since the Great War seemed to have finally come to its close, Vito asked if it was safe to travel. We were told that China was not available for booking, but Vito jumped instead on whatever boat was available first thing. He said we could always go to China later. When he purchased the tickets, he hid them from me and wanted to surprise me with where we were going.  
I was excited and terrified all at once. We were on a ship later that week sailing for Russia, of all places. I had a sneaking suspicion that he chose it simply because it sort of rhymed with Asia.  
As we traveled, I got to thinking. I lost the book I had brought with me to read and Vito told me it was bad to mingle with the other travelers in case we had to eat one of them later, so there was little else to do but talk and think with my Maker.  
“I had a childhood friend I called Mickey that was from Russia,” I told him. “I am a bit curious what his country is like. I am starting to miss him and think about him a lot now, thanks to this trip. I wish I had asked what village he came from.”  
“Russia is a large and diverse place. Do you have any idea what part of Russia he was from? Serbia, Asian Russia, or European Russia?”  
“I have no idea.”  
“Your friend was probably a Russian Jew. They have it rough in nearly every part of the world, but Russia is one of the countries hitting them very hard recently. It’s possible you and I could have Jewish roots. There was a bit of a stigma during my time against Jews, and against red heads in general. Italian peasants whispered Judas had red hair and that it meant a man or woman had Jew-blood. Some blamed Jews for helping to spread plague or outright causing it by poisoning wells.”  
“Was any of it true?” I asked.  
He gave me a weary look, “What do you think?”  
He thought my question was stupid, obviously, but he had stopped slapping me for asking questions. He did it because he encouraged questions, even dumb ones, and I had become practiced at dodging his hand. He saw that I made an effort to educate myself.  
Since I had not been to school, I essentially home-schooled myself with him to tutor and guide me when I asked for it. He had been right when he said I was stubborn and curious, but those were good qualities in anyone that wished to learn and do things.  
“I don’t see why they would poison wells,” I explained my own two cents on the matter. “If the Jews were local, they would be tainting their own drinking water. If they were wandering murderers, there was nothing to gain from killing strangers. They escaped a lot of illness because they kept to themselves and actually bathed often because Jewish custom demanded it.”  
“Good! That was what I thought. My village had no Jews and they knew I had red hair, but my family had been there a long time and were always at Mass. It is my theory that my family had roots in Gaul. The Romans bought red-headed slaves as a sign of status since it was a rare trait and showed you could afford exotic slaves. The nearby abbey publicly shamed Jews but privately sheltered them and smuggled them away when beatings and killings began. There were good men there.”  
He caught a rat as he talked and bit it, making a face as he drank. It made me realize that I was thirsty too, but I wanted to avoid drinking from rats as long as possible. He offered me a rat and I waved it away.  
“You have not fed for a while,” he pointed out.  
“Call it an experiment. I’ll feed when I start to feel frantic.”  
“It is good to test your limits,” he said between sips. “And vampires need to learn how long they can go without blood and do their best to stretch that time out to survive if they must. The teachings of Lilith and Cain say it is good for our souls to deny ourselves once in a while, but I admit that I do savor a bit of revenge I get killing rats for all the ill they caused in my lifetime.”  
I noticed he was much more forthcoming with details about his past and the vampire religion. The whole time on the ship, he spoke of little else. I didn’t mind. I was finally developing an interest in the subject of theology, but I had no idea how significant it was that he was telling me even the tiniest detail of the vampire cult.  
When the boat reached port, we took a short train ride to the heart of Petrograd. Vito wanted to avoid the country-side and attract as little notice as possible. I had wanted to linger in the small villages outside the large city and get to know the people. It did not take long for me to realize as we traveled through more of it later that Russia was a terribly sobering place. The Great War had been a disaster for Russia in every possible way. I was used to crowds, but Russia was and is, I cannot stress enough, a vast and isolated place.  
“There are ancient and dangerous vampires in this country,” he reminded me. “In Russia, especially Siberia, it is easy to put miles and miles between you and any kind of civilization.”  
“Why are we here at all then?”  
“I am meeting someone.”  
“Another vampire?” I was intrigued. “But you have always said to avoid them!”  
“He is an associate of mine and will not harm you as long as I am there. He is very shy and suspicious. I am surprised he agreed to meet me in a large city but he said he feels safer surrounded by mortals these days.”  
“Why? Is he being hunted? Did he upset the Council of Elders somehow?”  
“Let’s just say he is in exile like me.”  
We entered the streets of Petrograd. It was the old Imperial Capital of Russia, and it was beautiful, a stark contrast compared to the rest of the country. The palaces were a sight to behold and because much of the streets were empty and it was the time of year when darkness dominated more hours of the day, it gave the ancient city a haunting atmosphere.  
For a vampire, it was perfect since we also do not feel cold as badly as humans do. It was December 1922 and the Russian Civil War had ended but many people had emptied out of Petrograd and gone to Moscow or fled the country entirely. Many shops and inns were closed, but we found a place that allowed us in, desperate for money.  
The associate was a dark-haired and dark-eyed vampire. He wore black robes like a priest and there was a woman on his arm. I realized that she, too, was a vampire. She was blonde and blue-eyed and wore peasant garb. I stared at them, and particularly her, with awe and envy, knowing that I would never grow into a vampire, or even a woman, such as these specimens. I had never met any other vampire besides Vito and did not expect to encounter many. He had nearly forbidden such contact, after all.  
The vampiress gave me a piercing glance and exclaimed with disgust, “Really, Vito? I did not realize that you had developed a taste for children!”  
Although she and her partner spoke English with heavy Russian accents, I understood her jab well enough and snapped, “I am not his lover!”  
The vampire raised an eyebrow, “It is an odd choice, I must admit, to make a child vampire. There is always a method to our friend’s madness, darling. It is not our business to question a fellow’s choice in their companions.”  
“The Council would have a conniption over this!”  
“Good thing that you would never tell them then,” Vito gazed quietly back at her with unflinching eyes.  
The vampire drew out a pipe and lit it. He offered it to Vito, but he waved it away so the vampire couple shared it together throughout the conversation. They seemed so comfortable and synchronized with each other I found myself staring again. I wondered how long they had been acquainted and which one, if either, had made the other. I knew better than to start blurting out such personal questions and left the talking to my Maker.  
“Alex, this is Vladimir and Mishka. Well, that is what they are calling themselves these days. Vladimir, Mishka, meet Alex.”  
“Preevyet,” the two said the Russian greeting in perfect unison.  
I waved shyly.  
“So how is America, Vito?”  
“Booming. I dare say war makes that country pop.”  
Vladimir snorted, “It’s a young nation that entered the Great War late. No one landed on their shores to invade. They did not watch their civilians butchered or their countrymen starve. Have you seen the state of sorry Russia? Between war, famine, and revolution, it is a wonder that there is anything left! The damn Bolsheviks are making Moscow the capital! Moscow, when St. Petersburg has been the nation’s capital for centuries. We had only just gotten used to calling the place Petrograd. There is already talk of changing the name again. These are the small but criminally annoying things about living for so long, little Alex: the names of every country, city, and street change constantly. No wonder most vampires go insane!”  
I couldn’t help but giggle.  
“Is it true, then, that the Romanovs have been confirmed dead?”  
“Officially, no, but we saw the corpses of Nicholas and his family ourselves,” Mishka bemoaned. “They have since been buried and hidden. The new government doesn’t want the public to know they murdered a tsar that had already abdicated along with his wife and children in cold blood. I laugh every time a new Romanov pretender shows up. It proves the people in charge are cowards and easily threatened. If one of these imposters gathers enough support, it could mean the end of them. No one has shown such promise, or we would give them our complete and total backing. It is a shame. Rasputin was right about everything in the end.”  
“What did the Mad Monk predict?” Vito’s interest was piqued immensely.  
“Gregory Rasputin was no monk, imbecile; he was a Strannik, a wandering holy man. He believed that the Orthodox Church was misguided and that his revelations and teachings came directly from God. He told the tsar that declaring war on Germany would be disastrous for the nation. He was right. He said there would be oceans of tears and blood. He was right. He said that if one of the tsarina’s relatives killed him, her family would outlive him for no more than two years. He was right.”  
“Losing him was a terrible loss as well, if even half the things I have heard about that man are true,” Vito said with a regretful sigh.  
“Yes,” Mishka puffed her pipe. “He was one of ours.”  
“He was?” Vito and I gasped aloud.  
“Keep it down!” the couple hissed at us.  
“Sorry,” Vito whispered. “When?”  
“We made him,” Vladimir said proudly, “during his wanderings in Siberia, searching for the Khlysts sect. Instead of them, he found us while we were performing a ritual. Usually we kill anyone, mortal or vampire, that spies on our rituals, but Gregory was hypnotic and fascinating even before he turned. We used our connections in the Romanov court to introduce him to the tsar.”  
“But why?”  
“It was on the Council’s orders, in fact,” Vladimir answered. “How else do you think Rasputin was able to heal Alexis every time the boy bled?”  
“So it was their goal to save the royal family? I am surprised!”  
“They like keeping the flock in check. You can’t blame them.”  
“Oh yes, I can,” Vito’s voice dripped with disdain. “I can when they deliberately meddle in the politics and affairs of mortals and fail miserably.”  
“You would not say this if everything had gone according to their plan, I am sure!”  
“Since when has the Council succeeded in any of their schemes?”  
“Well, Gregory was doing them proud for a while. He won Alexandria over almost immediately, but we knew that was going to be the easiest part. The Orthodox Church couldn’t deny his power and sang his praises as a true holy man. He was gaining followers in Siberia and here in Petrograd. He took to the vampire creed and philosophy quickly. In some ways, it was not unlike his personal beliefs.”  
“How on earth did you keep a man like that a secret vampire for so long? Wasn’t the man seen eating, drinking, and walking in the sun?”  
“It was more difficult than anyone had expected. He was also a family man, if you can believe that. He kept his transformation a secret from his wife and daughters and the mistress that lived with him. He ate and drank constantly and on purpose. Rasputin was no stranger to pain. I think he liked it as much as he liked his women. He missed spirits and wines the most after he was turned. He knew what the public thought of him and the suspicions of his enemies. He ate and drank for show, retching it as soon as no one saw. When they did witness him losing his breakfast, they only assumed he was drunk. He was seen with prostitutes and unsavory men in his company because they were his victims, not his bed warmers. As for sunlight, he tolerated it far more than new vampires ordinarily can. Sometimes I think he was holy or at least super-human. Petrograd has long spells of hardly any sunlight, though, and whenever he returned to Siberia, there was even less of it.”  
“Very clever,” Vito was impressed. “So then what went wrong?”  
“Rasputin developed a guilty conscience and the council started to regret turning him is the short story.”  
“You know me, Vladimir; I never want the short version of a story.”  
“Fine. I am almost certain he heard voices in his head since he was a boy. He called them his demons and angels, but he did not see them as a symptom of an illness or a curse. He believed they were the source of his power and his holiness. Whenever he wanted, he would allow one or the other to possess his body. He believed that no one was without sin. In fact, sin was absolutely needed in order for us to repent and return to God. He would allow his demons to possess him so that he could understand and indulge in sin. He called his angels when he needed to perform a miracle and exorcise sin when it got out of hand. This remarkable outlook and control, as well as his many other talents, is exactly why he seemed like a perfect candidate for a vampire.”  
“But once he became one of us,” Mishka chimed, “he felt that he could no longer control when the demons took over. He worried that the angels had completely abandoned him or even worse: they had been devils in disguise the entire time! The newspapers did not help when they started labeling Rasputin the Anti-Christ. He had been a vegetarian and suddenly he was a blood drinker. Every time he took a human life, even wretched thieves and diseased prostitutes, his mind cracked a little more.”  
“Mishka and I began to fill bottles with blood we took from our own victims and gave them to him disguised as dessert wines so he could tell himself he was not killing anyone for his sustenance. We encouraged him to feed on animals. We spent long nights debating theology with him.”  
“Dear God, I wish I had been there!”  
“So do we. Maybe you could have gotten through to him.”  
“What did he do that alarmed the Council?”  
“He was starting to write manifests and doctrines about his faith. It was a bizarre hodgepodge of Orthodox Christianity, a little bit of Khlysts philosophy, superstitious babble he picked up in Siberia, but most damning of all, some of the vampire doctrine was muddled within the core of it. We defended him. We told the Council that he was merely writing thoughts and drafts, not a complete or even legible manifesto. Gregory had been illiterate until he met us and he wasn’t writing anything that mortals could understand as our own. We promised to correct his beliefs and his behavior. It was a promise we knew we couldn’t keep.”  
“Were they behind his assassination attempts, then?” Vito asked.  
“We do not think so. When the prostitute stabbed him, we are almost certain the Church was behind it. He hid at a Siberian hospital and reopened his wound every time the nurses and doctors examined him. I can’t imagine how painful that was, considering the crazed, nose-less woman managed to disembowel him! I don’t think he cared if he exposed vampires at that point. I think he just couldn’t bear the thought of his precious daughters finding out that their father was a blood sucking monster. When Felix and his cohorts tried to slay him, I think they simply blamed him for Russia’s poor performance in the Great War. According to Felix, they poisoned him, shot him, and drowned him trying to kill him. They failed too, but they dumped his weakened body into the river. When the cadaver was found three days later, we were mortified that they did an autopsy.”  
“An autopsy!” Vito’s eyes bulged.  
“Yes! He was so high profile, we were sure that autopsy would spell doom for all vampires! Luckily, the original autopsy papers were ‘lost’ and the man that performed it recanted much of what he had said and seen about the body. So many people were saying that there was water in the lungs, proving that Rasputin had been alive when thrown in the river. There are photos that clearly show a bullet hole in his head. But the new autopsy reported that there was no poison at all, no water in the lungs, and a single bullet had killed him. We believe that the Council had been watching Rasputin a long time, as were the nobles and police. As soon as his body was dumped in the river, they simply finished him off and threatened or bribed the man that performed the autopsy.”  
“It is entirely possible that perhaps there is no test yet to discover vampirism. Or whatever is in our blood that makes us vampires not only erased all trace of the poison in Rasputin’s system, it may also leave no trace of its own existence in the flesh and bones when we expire for good and all.”  
The vampire couple seemed intrigued by that. They chatted to each other in Russian so quickly and excitedly for a bit, forgetting we were there. Vito only knew a smattering of their language so I couldn’t ask him to interpret.  
“Those things are possible,” Mishka remembered us at last. “But it was only a matter of time before someone found out what Rasputin was. If they didn’t, the Council was on the verge of branding him not only a failure of a vampire but a heretic as well. He ended up doing more harm to the Romanovs than good.”  
“It was the tsar’s own colossal incompetence and the horror of the Great War that ended Russia’s government,” Vito insisted.  
“Nicholas was no Peter the Great, our contemporary,” Vladimir bristled with indignation. “But you and many of the Russian people forget that the Romanovs did not live nearly as extravagantly as European royalty! They ruled this land for three hundred years! Monarchies and Empires can do great good for the world with the right leaders. You think the Bolsheviks will do any better? Pah! I spit on these new governments overthrowing their betters in favor of peasants. It is not their birth I hold against them! It is their lack of education and their lack of discipline that I despise! Governments run by dreamers, chatterboxes, and back-biters are chaotic, ineffective and easily fall to corruption! They change leaders and ideals quicker than a man takes a shit! Mark my words, by the end of this century, there will be no royal families left in the world. It is a sad, sad thing!”  
“If only we could have saved the tsar’s little son and he had lived just long enough to have a son of his own,” Mishka agreed, “We could restore Russia some day.”  
“The line was tainted,” Vito said angrily. “If revolution hadn’t killed the dynasty, it would have been gone within the next generation. I was not raised in an Imperial court like you two. I was an uneducated, undisciplined Italian peasant, remember? If Nicholas had been a strong, benevolent ruler, the peasants wouldn’t have been rioting for bread and his own soldiers would never have turned on him! I heartily disagree with you, my friends, and I am not sorry to see the old ways die!”  
Mishka almost stormed form the table in a puff of smoke, but Vladimir restrained her. I sat frozen, merely enjoying the show, neutral in all this.  
“I apologize,” Vito said sincerely. “But vampires must be apolitical and citizens of the world. We should be indifferent to leaders of sheep. Tell the Council that if they really want to shepherd the flock they should prevent another great war not play favorites with family names simply because they are familiar. I have seen many things, but nothing quite like that war. I do not wish to see anything like it ever again.”  
“I have a feeling it will not be the last great war,” Mishka said prophetically. “Even if they become shadowy, silent wars, they will become worse. Humans keep improving ways to kill each other. The worst is yet to come.”  
“It shall never be a utopian world,” Vladimir agreed. “Old habits die hard as do old loyalties. You lived in Italy, a country of independent city states that even when united never truly felt whole. You tilled the soil, but you did not bleed in battle for it as I did or strained over its bureaucracy and laws during peace time. We are Russians and will always be Russians. You and your little girl there cannot understand that sort of love of homeland.”  
“You may be right,” Vito smiled. “Sometimes I envy that passion.”  
“And sometimes we envy you! You have nothing to hold you back from going anywhere and seeing the big picture.”  
“I have my limits. Some places are dangerous even for vampires.”  
“That they are. I wouldn’t call Russia a safe place anymore. I must recommend you avoid Germany as well for a while.”  
“Thank you for the advice,” Vito suddenly changed the subject. “I must show you something. It is a matter of old business.”  
At those last words, Vladimir and Mishka became silent. The entire mood changed and I looked at the adult vampires in sheer puzzlement. Vladimir took a long puff from his pipe, extinguished it, and then nodded.  
“Yes, the old business. Let’s get on with it.”  
“I brought a gift.”  
Vito placed a stuffed satchel on the table. Mishka reached out pale fingers with painted gold nails and took it without a word or single glance at its contents.  
“We will have to meet you again soon,” Vladimir said. “Preferably in another country.”  
“Why not America?” Vito suggested. “It is one of the few places that you love birds have never been to, right? The job will take a couple years at least and I wanted to take Alex on a tour of Europe.”  
“How generous of you,” Mishka rolled her eyes.  
“In many places, the fad is to take such a tour when a child begins to come of age. Alex would be blossoming into a young lady by now if she was mortal, not quite fifteen but almost. Back in my time, you were considered an adult by twelve, if you can believe it.”  
“The fourteenth century in peasant Italy? It is no surprise. The age is not too far off from what we considered normal. It was later, but Russia is no warm, temperate climate. Our lives shared a few things in common. They were often harsh and short.”  
“This one was not even ten, though,” Mishka pointed to me. “She looks nine or ten. Did you read of Peter Pan and decide to make your own Wendy?”  
“I was dying of the Spanish flu,” I jumped to his defense. “Instead of a normal mortal life, I get to have an endless childhood.”  
“A never ending hell if you ask me,” Vladimir snorted.  
“You are a Lost Boy, Alex.”  
I was made speechless by that. Mishka rose with the satchel in her arms. Vladimir offered a hand to us.  
“Enjoy your tour. We will contact you.”  
“Always a pleasure, my friends.”  
Vito shook his hand and kissed Mishka on the cheek. Despite the fact that she seemed critical of my Maker the entire encounter, she actually smiled affectionately at us as she said goodbye. They left a sizable tip to the establishment and made a graceful exit. Vito added a few coins of his own and we left a few minutes after them. It was snowing as we walked and had grown cold enough that I actually hugged myself in an attempt to keep warm.  
“What was it that you gave them?” I asked.  
“Scrolls to transcribe for me.”  
“What kind of scrolls?”  
“I am not wholly certain yet. It is in an ancient language I am unfamiliar with but Vladimir is. In fact, he is one of the few experts on the subject in the world. I am hoping the writing is Cyrillic but it could be Old Turkic.”  
“What are those?”  
“Cyrillic is one of the oldest forms of Russian writing, a Greek alphabet used in an attempt to write the old Slavic languages. Old Turkic is even older and rarer, and obviously is Turkish.”  
“How old is Vladimir to be an expert on such old writings?”  
“I can’t tell you too much, child, out of respect for his privacy. Vladimir is not even his original name, to tell the truth, but I can tell you some general things about him and his wife. You heard them mention Peter the Great, yes? He was the Russian tsar that reigned in the eighteenth century. Vladimir was a noble raised at his court and Mishka, not called that then, was one of Peter’s mistresses for a brief while. One of the many things Peter did was to revise the old languages like Cyrillic. Vladimir was the man he used for those sorts of jobs, among other things.”  
“So they are pretty old, but not as old as you.”  
“Please stop reminding me!” he rubbed my hair playfully.  
“So where are we going now, Vito?”  
“Wherever you like, Alex. It’s your grand tour, after all.”

After we spent a few weeks traveling and taking in Russia, we spent about a few months in each country on our list. The exception was Italy. We stayed over a year there. We hit Poland, the newly formed country, right after Russia. Vito told me it had been a great kingdom of its own for centuries but had been gobbled up by the Russian and Austrian-Hungarian empires, its borders carved up so many times and its name and identity redone each time. It was rich with vampires and vampire lore and a beautiful land full of natural resources. It was no wonder so many other countries were greedy for it. We did not see any vampires while there, but there were tons of local superstitions about them so we had to be extra careful when we hunted and interacted with the natives.  
One thing we noticed about Poland was that there were many thriving Jewish communities, and since Vito was a trained rabbi, we lived easily among them. I had been baffled enough by the Orthodox Church in Russia. The Hebrew religion seemed even more foreign to me, but since I looked so young and was a girl, Vito assured me that I wasn’t expected to know much. We lived in a small village not far from Warsaw that was sorely in need of a Rabbi, so I got to watch Vito perform the Sabbath every week we were there. He performed a wedding, a funeral, and even a circumcision.  
The Jews were very hospitable and the other children went out of their way to include me in their games. I could not speak Polish or Hebrew, though, so all our interactions were simple play unless Vito interpreted for me. He said the good thing about Jews and Muslims was that they always had a common language thanks to their religion. The Jews had Hebrew or Yiddish, and the Muslims had Arabic to keep in touch with their brothers and sisters in Allah or God no matter what part of the globe they were on. Christians did not have such a universal language among them and he said that was a sad thing.  
While we lived with the Jews, I thought of Mickey a lot and became fond of them. We might have stayed longer if a real rabbi had not moved to the village to fill in. Vito enjoyed pretending to be a spiritual leader a little too much. We were given many gifts when we left. If only we had known what horrible things would take place throughout Poland in just a few short years…  
Next we traveled to another new country, Czechoslovakia, then to Austria, and then to Italy, avoiding Germany like Vladimir had warned. Vito wanted to ignore the warning. He said he very much wanted to see Berlin and that Germany had a unique culture he wished to experience, but we heard the news that there were French troops there demanding war reparation payments. Adolf Hitler had been stirring up attention for some time, and he was being written about in the Munich Post and even New York Times, both of which Vito read.  
By the time he made his infamous coup attempt with the infant Nazi Party in late 1923, we were in Italy, trying to track down our mortal family members and unconcerned with what seemed like a forgettable man.  
Vito’s old village was long gone, but we did see the new little town that sprang up in its place. We went to churches, courthouses, libraries, and asked elders wherever we went for records but were frustrated every time with dead ends and mere coincidences when we searched for any real leads on our family. While we hunted, we agreed not to feed on any redheaded person just in case they were somehow a relative. We knew it was silly, and that any person could potentially be related despite the color of hair, but it eased our conscience. We made our lair in cemeteries and ruins but rented a room whenever we had pocket money for it. We visited Florence, Naples, Venice, and even Sicily, but we stayed away from Rome.  
“Why not go to Rome?” I asked with disappointment. “There is so much there! It’s the Catholic Capitol for crying out loud! You should want to go there even more badly than me! What the hell is the problem?”  
“It’s also the vampire capital of the world, if there is such a thing,” he answered disparagingly. “Some vampires like to imagine that Rome is still the center of the universe. All the powerful and wealthy vampires visit or boast that they lived there. There are clans battling for power that never stop, two in particular. The first dwells in the secret vaults of the Vatican and controls the banks. Their patriarch claims to be a bastard son of a Medici, which could be true or not. The other clan calls the catacombs their home and their leader styles himself an emperor, the last of the true Romans. The Vatican Vampires are snobby, ancient, and secretive. The Catacomb Vampires may be led by a powerful and old vampire, but he can’t prove his lineage any more than the ‘Medici’ can and all his followers seem to be young and cult-like and know nothing of subtlety. All of them are boot-lickers of the Council.”  
“Are you jealous?”  
Vito laughed, “No I just find it all hysterical. Rome itself and places like it are overrated. The city is dirty, decayed, and the last time I saw the great Coliseum, it was covered in ugly graffiti and tourists were pissing on its walls. I don’t usually take pleasure in killing my prey, but those idiots were an exception.”  
By the time we left Italy, I could speak the language fluently so that Spanish was also a given. To practice and ingrain my newly acquired language, we went to Spain next and then France. I picked up a little bit of French, but we didn’t stay long. We were in Paris only a few hours to see the Louvre Museum since it was another hotspot for Council Vampires. We got on a boat, crossed the English Channel, and we spent a decent amount of time in the UK. I was actually very happy to hear English spoken again. We had seen castles in Spain and France, but I insisted we see all the castles and monuments this time, including the famous Stonehenge.  
We returned to Chicago near the end of 1926. There were still many countries on our wish list like China, Egypt, and Japan, but I was getting homesick. The city had changed so much! Movies were getting so much better and cars were dying along the side of the road more often than horses.  
When we opened the door to our old lair, however, there was an ominous letter awaiting us. I opened the letter before Vito could snatch it, but it was written in Latin and useless to me. I handed it sheepishly to my Maker, hoping he would interpret it. He read it in silence, though.  
“Well, what does it say?” I asked impatiently. “It is from Vladimir and Mishka, isn’t it?”  
“It is.”  
“And?”  
“I am to meet them. They have been waiting for us to finish our tour.”  
I went to grab my hat and coat, eager to meet with the only other vampires I knew again, but Vito stopped me.  
“I need to meet them alone.”  
“But why? You didn’t mind that I saw them last time!”  
“You want to see them?”  
“Of course!”  
“Fine, then maybe we can all hunt together some time. Tonight, though, I need to discuss something with them.”  
“The old business?”  
“Yes, the old business.”  
He went to go meet with them, but he made the mistake of leaving the letter behind as well. I looked at the letter a long time, my curiosity soaring. I finally made up my mind to try to transcribe it myself, grabbing one of Vito’s Old Catholic Bibles and hurrying to the nearest library. I was able to get the gist of the letter.  
V,  
It is VL and M. We have been staying in the city some time. We have completed the task. Meet us at the Old Church. You are in danger. Keep little one out of it.  
When I spelled out the last few lines, my heart sank. I was also panicked because I realized the others wouldn’t have wanted me to know this much. If I asked Vito to explain the letter, he would probably deny everything or refuse to tell me what was going on. I racked my brain trying to guess what they were talking about. What kind of danger could he possibly be in? It must have had to do with those scrolls.  
They had all mentioned before that they were hiding something from the Vampire Council, and although Vito claimed he never had anything to do with them or done anything wrong, Mishka and Vladimir seemed to still have connections and were helping him with something the Council did not approve of.  
“The Old Church,” I said aloud to myself. “I wonder where that is.” If I was quick, maybe I could find where they were meeting and listen in to their conversation. I had wasted time translating the letter, but maybe I could question Mishka and Vladimir if Vito had already gone. They did not seem to be the type of vampires that felt comfortable living among humans and kept their lairs in more traditional places.  
“Excuse me, miss,” I approached the librarian. “What is the oldest church here in Chicago?”  
“Old St. Patrick’s,” she answered immediately.  
“I thought so. Thanks.”  
I knew exactly where the church was. We had even been there before, but I wasn’t sure if it was actually the oldest church and since we had been gone several years, it might have even been torn down or under reconstruction. I still had the letter in hand as I dashed in the direction of the church. I remembered I should be able to sense other vampires, too, so I kept that in mind. When I neared the city blocks where the church stood, I definitely felt something that was off.  
“Looks like you forgot to keep an eye on your fledgling, Vito,” I heard Vladimir growl nearby and he snatched me before I could react.  
“You also did not burn the letter like we told you to,” Mishka snickered.  
I hadn’t even reached the Church door; they had heard me long before I heard them.  
“I actually didn’t expect her to be able to read a word of the letter or find us so soon,” Vito admitted.  
“You sound very proud of that!”  
“I am, though I shouldn’t be surprised.”  
The vampire couple glared at him as he laughed out loud. I was blushing and confused. The letter had mentioned danger, but Vito did not seem to be taking anything seriously. Maybe he was masking it all for my sake?  
“The idiot has probably told the girl everything anyway,” Mishka said. “How much do you know?”  
“You said in the letter that my Maker is in trouble,” I blurted out.  
“They are exaggerating,” Vito waved his hand in the air. “They have always been dramatic.”  
“Now that the girl is here there is no use lying to her,” Vladimir hissed. “The Council is hunting you diligently. You were wanted before, of course, but you were very low priority. We were there when the Supreme declared you number one on their list of criminals.”  
“But what has he done?” I began trembling and turned to my Maker. “Vito?”  
“Oh, child, I ruffled some of the old buzzards’ feathers by telling them what I thought of them, that’s all.”  
I didn’t believe him, and the lack of faith was all over my face. I glanced at Mishka and Vladimir, hoping that they would explain, but they would give me no answers. The two of them would not even look at me.  
“You should be more careful from now on, Vito,” Mishka said. “If your child fledgling can track you down so easily, I would not take these matters so lightly. We have been here long enough, my darling Vladimir.”  
“We have,” he said in agreement. “I do not like this city. Is there some other place in America you would recommend? Never mind. We do not want anyone to guess where we are going.”  
“Wait, don’t go!”  
The two of them disappeared with a speed I could not have possibly matched. I turned to my Maker.  
“Vito-“  
“I know you are sorry to see them go, Alex. Don’t be. Vladimir is one of those silent and brooding grumps and Mishka can be a vindictive shrew.”  
“Don’t you try to change the subject! You need to tell me what is going on!”  
Vito’s eyes suddenly became hard and he said, “That is simply not true. I tell you only what you need to know when I do for good reason! I do not always ask you what you are doing and where you are going! We are allowed a certain amount of privacy, so just this once, Alex, just this one time, stay out of my affairs!”  
“But Vito, I- I care for you.”  
He sighed at that and reached out his arms. I took my place there. He was warm still from his last kill. I clutched him tight and he gripped back.  
“I know you care for me,” he said softly. “You know I would never do anything to put you in harm’s way. I never risk myself needlessly, because you still need me. I will not let you go out alone into the world unless I have no other choice. I don’t mean to frighten you, talking about this. Mishka and Vladimir have known me for years. They are dear friends. They are overreacting on my account for the same reason you are. Vampires find it very difficult to make friends, especially among their own. Mortals are so easy to deceive and manipulate. Vampires are a different breed. Each one, no matter our age, is a powerful being in our own right. We can be aloof and intimidating and we are terrible at trusting one another, but you have to trust me. I am in no real danger. If ever I talk about leaving you or something of the sort, it is only to prepare you for those dreaded what if scenarios. Do you understand?”  
“I guess I don’t have any other choice.”  
“I love you, Alex.”  
He gave me a tender kiss on the top of my head and slipped away from me as I remained in shock. My Maker had never said those words to me before. I knew he cared, but he had never actually said it aloud like that. Those silly words seem so meaningless most of the time and yet they can be so powerful that they seem like a punch in the gut and your psyche. It must have been difficult for him to say it. I felt such a rush of gratitude and affection for Vito, I did not press him on the subject of what he had done and was running from for a long time. 

It felt so good to be back in Chicago! If we were in danger, you would have never guessed it. The city was always growing bigger. There was over two million people living there when we had left on our tour and nearly three million by the time we came home since the immigration ban that had been in place during the Great War had been lifted.  
Though it was true that the country was becoming more careful about the number and particular floods of people entering, Chicago was still one of the largest cities in America and along with New York, San Francisco and New Orleans, Chicago was a city those immigrants knew of and moved to. I was convinced that if anyone was trying to find us, it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. In all of my time in Chicago, I had never even sensed another vampire and the city had too many distractions for anyone to keep track of the scent of Undead.  
I prowled around the streets as often as I could; neglecting any studies I had previously taken up. I would stay all day at the movies. I simply covered myself in blankets, fetched a ride, and stayed in the dark, safe theatre so long the staff had to shake me awake for closing time.  
Vito continued to attend the movies with me. His interest was renewed once the talkies became popular, but he didn’t care to see the movies over and over like I did. More often, I was alone. The staff recognized me, which doesn’t seem smart at all, since Vito and I needed to be discreet, but I never killed anyone near or in the theatre and it was because the staff knew us that I was allowed to be unsupervised.  
After my movie binging, I would search for my evening meal, usually a lonely drunkard. I was and still am a bit of a boozehound. The smell of alcohol was as enticing to me as the smell of blood. I think even after I had killed my father, the smell of alcohol always reminded me of him so I was actually killing my father again and again.  
I am not proud of that fact, and I know Vito would have disapproved if I had cared to admit it to him, but every vampire needs a defensive technique of some kind that allows them to kill people. Mortals barely even stop to think of the animal that died when they eat their food. Don’t try to tell me vegetarians are morally superior. Their claim that their meals are entirely bloodless and cruelty-free is merely a comforting lie. Mortals don’t have to look their lunch in the eye unless they work in a food factory or farm, and they would be lying if they said that they actually had to talk to it.  
Prohibition never stopped me from finding my prey, by the way. I saw booze of all kinds in the streets and sold under the table in nearly every establishment. All the Prohibition Act did was made drinking even more alluring and lucrative. It changed crime of the era, and not for the better. Bootleggers and gangs were the real kings of Chicago.  
In fact, Al Capone was my hero until the Valentine’s Day Massacre. Without him and his gangs, I would have been out of luck and forced to feed on sober people. What an awful thought! Lots of people resorted to home brewed moonshine which was disgusting, often toxic, and disguised my victims’ deaths well.  
Flushed with the two greatest things I could possibly experience as a vampire: Blood tinged with strong booze, I would hit the jazz hot spots. I would dance at the jazz club until dawn or until a suspicious adult asked where my parents were, whichever came first. And when I say that I danced until dawn, I am not kidding. A couple dancing themselves to death was a real issue of the time. Teenagers gathered at clubs and had dancing marathons where they would dance until exhaustion forced them to stop or drop. There were nurses along the sides of the dance floor and public cots nearby.  
I’ll admit, I got away with a few public meals at these marathons so maybe the newspapers were just a little mistaken about that whole danced to death thing. I guess you could say that the late 20’s through the 30’s were my party years. If I had not been stricken with flu and then a mild case of vampirism, these dancing teens would have been my peers!  
Vito, on the other hand, often remained in the flat that we rented. He would read and write so much he neglected to feed more often than not. He was always bad at keeping himself fed, but now he made himself sick because he went so long. He was ghastly, his skin shrunken, wrinkled and dry. He was lethargic and boring. He even stopped going out in his priest garb to the churches. If he spoke, he talked about trivial things that I found absolutely boring. I gave him very little feedback except to remind him to go feed.  
I hunted alone most of the time now and missed having Vito share with me. I had become an adept killer and was confident that I could lure victims up to the flat just to get Vito some nourishment. If he refused to go out and feed himself, I guess I had to deliver his food to him.  
I brought a mortal named Herman up to the flat because Vito had gone weeks without a drop of blood. The man was a moonshiner, old, drunk, and gullible. I convinced him that my father was a proprietor of his particular goods and would be willing to help improve his stills. Vito seemed a little surprised that I had brought us a guest, but I was certain he would know what to do with the man.  
“Oy vey, sir, are you sick?” Herman exclaimed when he saw my Maker.  
“Oh, yes, a bit under the weather. It will pass!” Vito answered with a smile. “Forgive me, my daughter and I don’t receive visitors often enough. It has been a long, long time. I must remember my manners.”  
“I’ll let you two get a start on your business relationship. Remember, father, that fish and visitors start to stink after three days!” I said with a wink as I shut the flat door behind me and went on my way to a club for the rest of the evening.  
Imagine my surprise when I returned to find Herman not only still alive and well, but chatting happily with Vito hours and hours later. I was exhausted and, you guessed it, drunk, so I rubbed my eyes and thought I was simply hallucinating. The man was still there when I awoke the next evening!  
“Well, look who decided to crawl out of bed!” Herman’s voice rent the air and I about jumped out of my skin. “Does your little girl not attend school, Vito?”  
“No, she has a private tutor. Alex, would you be a dear and wash up the dishes from supper?”  
He handed me some china dishes we had bought in Italy simply because they were beautiful decorations. No one had ever eaten anything off of them before. I stared at him with disbelief for a moment. I wondered what my Maker had possibly given him to eat. Glancing at the plate, I saw bread crumbs and some remains of sauce.  
I dropped the dishes into a wash bin that took me ten minutes to find because, once again, we never used these everyday objects that mortals used. I was so agitated I almost shattered the dishes. As I was making a fool of myself, I heard Vito saying goodbye to what should have been his dinner.  
“We must do this again sometime! I would love to practice the tea ceremonies again!”  
“I might take you up on that next Friday. I get tired of the taste of lye and paint thinner from my own brew.”  
“I imagine so! Do try to add a bit more actual malt to your mean whiskey, why don’t you? I can provide you much better ingredients!”  
Once the man had gone, I exploded.  
“What in the hell are you playing at, Vito?”  
“I have made a friend,” there was a broad grin on his face.  
“A friend? A friend! For such an educated and old vampire, you are incredibly stupid! I brought that man up here so that you could feed not make a friend!”  
“We have to deal with mortals sometimes, Alex. How do you think I make money? Not all vampires have access to the wealth the Council provides. This Prohibition thing is unique to America. That is it is to say it is uniquely profitable. Because I can pass off as both a rabbi and a priest, I am allowed wines and spirits that are illegal to others. Secondly, it was incredibly stupid of you to invite the man up to our home if you really wanted me to eat him. The law is getting better and better at solving murders and disappearances, especially when witnesses see the man at our door minutes before his death.”  
“Maybe you are right. I should be more careful. But you should just look at yourself! You are making yourself weak and sick. You need to eat more! What other choice did you give me?”  
“Alright, fine. You have made your point. If you are going to get so worked up over the old vampire, let’s go out and feed.”  
“Thank God!” I sighed with relief. “I was worried I might have to do what Vladimir and Mishka had to do with Rasputin and start bottling blood for you!”  
“Hey, maybe we could provide Herman with a less dangerous ingredient for his stills!”  
“We are not giving him blood wine!”  
Vito roared with laughter at that. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought as well. Imagine, all the people of Chicago unknowingly drinking human blood in their moonshine!  
As we left the building and walked together for the first time in what seemed like ages, I asked him, “Are we running out of money? Are we in trouble?”  
“Now I really know that you are growing up, Alex. You are always worried about something, but money concerns trump all else.”  
“Well, I know even though we don’t need it to buy food, it is nice to live in a flat instead of one of the immigrant tenements that I grew up in.”  
“You never did grow up, Alex,” Vito sounded sad for a brief moment.  
I gave him a sharp look, “You know what I mean. Not only do we need money for rent, but for countless other things. Books, furniture, tickets, bribes, if we should ever get caught doing something. The only thing my parents ever talked about was how much they always needed money. Do the little bits I get from our victims and from pick-pocketing the living not help?”  
“It does, but few people are foolish enough to carry more than a few bills in their pockets, and times change. America recovered nicely from the Great War. It didn’t even need to recover, really. I would still feel more comfortable keeping some of our wealth in the safer form of gold.”  
“Maybe I could get a job,” I cracked.  
“If they weren’t trying to ban children from working, maybe you could.”  
“Lucky for me I’m in a child’s body then.”  
Even though there was no hint of bitterness in my voice or thoughts when I said these things, I could tell it was making Vito uncomfortable. I tried to lighten the mood again.  
“What shall we have for dinner then? Italian, Chinese? Some Irish or Italian? There are some German immigrants we could feast on. Take your pick.”  
“You know I don’t care, Alex.”  
“Well, when we are done do you want to go see The Circus? It’s the new Charlie Chaplin film. You love him as much as I do still, right?”  
He nodded, but he still didn’t seem very enthusiastic.  
“We have money for the tickets, right?”  
“Of course.”  
I hoped all he needed was some blood to renew his spirits. 

Vito was right to worry about money. The stock market crash hit Chicago hard and it was heartbreaking to see so many people lose everything overnight. Vito was more optimistic than you would expect. I was panic stricken. I was young and not as worldly or other-worldly as he, so I read the newspapers reporting things like suicides, destitution, unemployment, and thought this might be the end for America.  
“America will recover, I’m sure,” my Maker said instead. “It is other countries I worry for. If you think America is going to be hit hard by this, imagine the war-torn countries we visited in Europe, the developing countries in the East, and the rural countries to the South. Lack of money is nothing new. The complete and utter destruction of land, the spilling of countless sons’ blood, that is something real and tangible that can never be recovered.”  
“Starving to death is a real thing,” I countered. “Without money, starvation is inevitable.”  
Killing was easier during this time, I must admit. Whenever I saw a person covering themselves with newspapers in the street because they had no home and could afford no blankets, I gave them a last warm embrace. When a child’s cheeks were gaunt and eyes sunken from hunger and they told me they had no parents, I hoped I was reuniting them. When I encountered a young man ready to jump from the tallest building they could find, I wondered if I really was saving their immortal soul preventing them from committing the sin of suicide.  
Shanty-towns became a haven of broken dreams, despair, and rampant with death. The Great Depression. The Great War. The Dust Bowl. There were so many Greats and almost none of them good. The 1930’s wasn’t just terrible for humans; it was a terrible decade for me. My self-indulgent party days were over. There were still dance marathons well into the 1930’s, Charlie Chaplin still made his films, jazz had not gone anywhere, but these diversions seemed little more than that.  
To make matters worse, Vito was slipping further and further from me every day. His human friend Herman seemed to get more life out of my Maker than I could and the man was not as dense as we thought he was. He sent a doctor to our door! I almost panicked and killed him. If he took my Maker’s pulse and found none, we would be doomed. Even if we somehow escaped with our lives after the doctor went screaming down the street about vampires, the Council would hunt us and destroy us for sure.  
Instead, I cursed the man out and threw his bag with all his medical supplies down the flight of steps to our room. I excused my behavior by explaining to the doctor and Herman when he asked that Vito was deeply religious and didn’t believe in medical intervention for his illness, only in God.  
“But what will happen to you, dear girl, if your father dies?”Herman asked.  
“I am older than I look. Did he say I was a child still?”  
“Now that you mention it, he has never said how old you are.”  
“Well, I am a late bloomer and small for my age. Don’t be fooled.”  
The real answer was that if Vito was gone, I would have to either murder Herman or leave Chicago. I also became angry at the fact that I would forever be in a child’s body. I would never be able to blend in with mortals for near as long as my Maker or any other vampire. One might not question a lack of wrinkles for decades, but when a little girl remained prepubescent for more than a few years, alarm bells would ring even in the dumbest men extremely quick.  
I could never buy land or sign a contract. I could not open a bank account or withdraw money or get a loan. If someone suspected that I lived alone and had no guardian, I could be shipped to an orphanage or exposed.  
Herman was not the person I should have been worried about. I hunted alone after the debacle with the doctor. Some of my anger and frustration was rearing its ugly head toward my Maker. I didn’t want to be angry with Vito. I knew it wasn’t his fault I was cursed to be a cretin all my life. What I could blame him for was for neglecting himself and befriending a human. He was neglecting me and risking my existence, not just his!  
I don’t want to hate him, my thoughts raced inside my head like desperate tendrils. I don’t want to be one of those vampires that despise their own Maker. I hated my father. Sometimes, I think if God exists, I hate him too. I need one person that I can love, not hate. One person that I can trust and rely on. One person is all I need, and Vito is the only option I have left! My parents are dead! I am an orphan. I don’t want to be made an orphan again!  
I was so distracted with my internalizations I found myself hunting in an entirely different section of the city than I usually did. My feet led me away from the shanty towns and the jazz clubs that I loved so much and nearer to the factories and businesses. My thirst was secondary to my need to just rip something open to vent my feelings so I began stalking the first young man that presented himself as an opportunity. I could not glimpse the front of him because he was in such a hurry.  
He was on his way home from a night-shift, no doubt. He was lucky to have work at all. Did he have any idea how many handsome young men just like him were out of work? I saw them every evening standing in line at the soup kitchens. Well, there would be a much needed job opening after tonight. This poor man had worked his last shift.  
He must have heard me because he stopped in his tracks and turned around. His eyes landed on me, but I didn’t care. It was usually no big deal if my victims spotted me before I killed. Most of them were actually relieved when they realized that it was only a child following them alone in the dark. I was just about ready to lunge when the overhanging clouds cleared from the moon. It allowed just enough light so that we could see each other’s faces, and in that instant, he looked as startled as I.  
“Alex?” a trace of his Russian accent was still there.  
It was my Mickey, a grown man! Oh, goodness, he must have been at least twenty-five. Mickey was only a couple years older than I had been when the flu struck. He was tall and lean and so incredibly handsome! I wanted to hug him so badly. I remembered the last time I saw him, shyly gifting me a candy bar because at least one of us was too young to exchange kisses. I was reeling with both happiness and terror, but I tried not to show recognition. Did he really know who I was?  
“Alex?” this time, he reached out to touch me.  
“Who the heck is Alex, you creep?” I slapped his hand away. “Whoever she is, I am not her! My name is Marissa.”  
“Marissa?” he narrowed his beautiful blue eyes. “But you look so much like a girl I once knew.”  
I opened and closed my mouth stupidly. I almost spouted out a story that I was Alex’s daughter, but I knew that not nearly enough time had passed for that to have been remotely possible. In 1931 I would have been twenty-three, but any children I might have had would be younger than I looked now. The hesitation made me seem all the more suspicious. Mickey used that time to study every feature. I tried to dart away, but he grabbed my arm.  
“You have the same eyes, the same color hair, even the same hairstyle! That has got to be a-“  
“Coincidences, you ever heard of them?” I snapped.  
“Where have you been, Alex?”  
“I told you to let go!”  
I wrested free of his grasp and ran at full speed. That was a mistake. Vampires, even weak and young ones like me, run much faster than a mortal can. I was so panicked and upset that I didn’t think about that until it was too late. Mickey had probably seen the unnaturalness of it and caused his suspicions to soar to new heights. I returned to Vito without having fed and curled up in my bed and shut my eyes and pressed my hands against my ears so hard they hurt. I had to tell myself it would be alright.  
My thoughts were now full of Mickey and memories of my mortal days. The encounter with my old friend was an unpleasant one not unlike the day I had tried to be a human child again at the circus and shoved cotton candy into my mouth. What I suddenly wanted more than anything I had ever wanted before was to be a woman and enjoy what a woman could enjoy. I wanted to be like the women in the pictures: Desirable and kissed by a man. I watched romance movies like a teenage girl does: with glossy eyes and girlish dreams, but I had never imagined it being a tangible thing.  
Now I wished with all my might that I could grow up and experience something resembling what I saw in those romances with someone like Mickey. Would we have been together if I had been allowed to live a normal human life?  
“Vito, what is it like to be in love?”  
“What do you mean?”  
He had been reading a thick Bible until I asked that question.  
“You had a wife. The two of you had children together. What was that like?”  
“Why?”  
“I asked and I want to know, that is why! Must there be a reason?” I demanded impatiently.  
“It was, for me, the happiest chapter of my life. Oh, there were wretched parts to it. My wife was named Trisola. “  
“Do you remember what she looked like?”  
He nodded and tried to get up to fetch something, but he nearly stumbled when he tried to stand. I clicked my tongue with vexation.  
“When was the last time you fed?”  
“On Tuesday.”  
“Vito, today is Sunday!”  
“It is? I thought it was only Thursday.”  
“Well maybe you should eat Herman next time he drops by so he stops trying to cure you and discovers that you are already dead!”  
“Can’t do that. He is a friend and I have plans for him still.”  
“Can’t you make deals with other bootleggers? You know this Prohibition thing is not going to last forever. We will have to traffic something else soon.”  
“I know it and that is what we have been discussing. Never you mind about that. We were talking about love and you seemed to want to know everything about it two seconds ago. Have you lost interest already?”  
“No.”  
“Then hand me my sketchbook, would you kindly?”  
It was amazing how easily Vito could distract me from topic to topic. I had to dig through papers and scrolls and books on the table to find his sketchbook for a few moments but eventually found it and tossed it to him.  
“Is there are pencil or pen over there?”  
“I am not a damn maid!”  
After shouting back and forth at each other and searching every inch of the flat, I found the utensil he needed and he began sketching. Vito motioned once he was finished and I looked down at his rough sketch of a woman. She was rather plain, but I did not want to be rude and say that.  
“Is that Trisola?”  
“Such as I can render.”  
“Was she a good kisser?” I blurted out.  
Vito’s lips stretched into a thin smile. It was sweet, but it also made him look ghastly. There was hardly any color in his lips at all and his fangs were so predominant now that they curled past his lips.  
“Believe me, she had many talents.”  
I giggled, my mind extrapolating scenarios and innuendo.  
“What is this all this about? Did something happen to you lately?”  
“I saw a boy I used to know,” I confessed. “I just wondered what it was like to be in love and be married.”  
“I see. Did he see you? Are you thinking of striking up your old friendship, perhaps? Are you-“  
“I just saw him. That is all. I can’t be friends with him. I know that. I know what we are and what he is. Herman is risky enough to have around. I was having crazy thoughts.”  
For once, Vito seemed like he didn’t have anything to say on the matter. I was about to leave in disappointment, but he spoke as soon as I had given up hope of him speaking again.  
“You might not be able to experience love the way a man and woman would do, Alex, but if you love, you will find your own way to do it. My advice to you is to do what feels right.”  
“Thank you. Now go feed!”  
“Once I finish with what I am doing,” Vito said dismissively.  
I rolled my eyes and went out. I was getting tired of trying to remind my Maker to eat. I decided, this time, that Vito had lived centuries and knew his limit. He would go out to feed when he was absolutely in need of blood. His emaciation reminded me that I needed to feed as well.  
For many nights, I looked out for Mickey. I wasn’t looking to find him, I wanted to avoid him. I avoided the area I had last seen him and listened for his heartbeat and smell. Now that I had been exposed to his scent and his internal rhythm, I could recognize it anywhere. I hunted in new grounds and shook him for a few weeks. I was lulled into a false sense of security until one dreadful night.  
I was in the shanty-town and hunting hobos. I was actually in the middle of my kill, blood rushing over and past my tongue as my victim squirmed and gargled. That was when Mickey came upon me.  
“Oh my God! Alex, what are you doing?”  
“Mickey?”  
I had been caught red-handed. I mean I was soaked in the red blood of my freshly dead victim. He fell to my feet as Mickey stared. In my alarm, I had spilled rather than drank the last spurts of his life, and my eyes were like wide, eerie lamps. My fangs were fully extended. Most damning of all, I had uttered the name that the made up child Marissa could have never known. He looked terrified, and rightly so. There was no denying or excusing the appalling thing he was witnessing.  
My eyes filled with blood tears. I went to spread out my hands and dropped them. I looked at him helplessly. That gesture seemed to confuse him. He did not run.  
“Mickey, I am sorry. It is me, Alex,” I rushed to explain. “I remember you so well. You were my partner in crime, my muscle, my right-hand man. I missed you so. I was sick and that is why I vanished. I was- well -changed.”  
“Changed? Changed!” Mickey exclaimed with incredulity. “You are some kind of a monster!”  
“Please don’t say that!” I squeezed my eyes shut.  
“Look at you!”  
“I know this looks bad-“  
I stopped because he made a religious sign and began speaking in Russian wildly. But it was Greek, not Russian. Then I realized his sign was indeed the sign of the cross. It was the sign of the cross done the right way according to the Eastern Orthodox Church. They crossed themselves backwards from how I was raised to do it. I knew this now only because I had actually been to Russia and Vito had explained these things to me that I once thought so useless and meaningless. I realized that my Mickey was not a Jew, as I once suspected, but an Eastern Orthodox Christian.  
I wondered how many others had made the same kind of assumption that I had: That he was either a Jew trying to assimilate to Christian ways or that he was simply a foreign heathen. I wondered what had caused his family to uproot from their motherland and come here in the first place. If they had not been fleeing pogroms, what was it? I would probably never know.  
“You must leave,” I said to him. “Leave and forget what you are seeing. Tell no one. You can’t! Do you understand me?”  
He shook his head and I instinctively sensed he was going to flee. I pounced on him with all my strength. Even though I was blind with tears, my heart was breaking, and he struggled valiantly, I began to drain his blood as I stifled his cries. It was selfish of me. I wanted something of him and didn’t want his death to be entirely a waste.  
He spoke a few lest words as he died. Spasibo tebe, za to chto ty moy drug. I didn’t know what they meant, but I intended to ask Vito if he had any idea. I stood for a moment, his blood surging through me, and my mind rushing around in circles.  
“He has family,” I muttered to myself. “A wife, perhaps? Jesus, I hope he didn’t have any kids! He’s not too young to be a father. I know he had a sister. I can’t let him be found like this, but I can’t stick around either. What do I do?”  
There is always someone near in the shanty towns. I heard someone coming and ripped a gash into Mickey’s throat, destroying the evidence of my fangs and hoping his blood loss would be explained by the new wound. It was not ideal, but I didn’t have the luxury of time. 

When I returned home, all I wanted was to wallow in my guilt and misery. Mickey’s blood was still on my hands and I was torn between leaving them under a faucet with steaming hot water until the sin boiled away from my bones and leaving it there. I had never felt so wracked with grief over a mortal’s death. I had loved my mother, but her death was not my fault. I had laid the blame for that squarely upon my father’s shoulders.  
I exacted my revenge on him and took initial pleasure in it, but as time passed, Vito’s words seemed to be proven right. The murder had not brought me closure or satisfaction. I still didn’t know if he had registered what he had done by abandoning my mother and me. All he felt when he died was probably fear, not regret. Or maybe he did learn the lesson I desperately wanted him to learn. I would never know now because I had killed him so it made no difference to me.  
Mickey had been innocent. He had simply been returning home from work when he stumbled upon me and instead of ignoring his hunch that I was his old friend, he had hunted down the truth, damn the cost. What must he have really thought of me? Did he feel that I had abandoned him? Did I mean more to him than I had ever thought? Did the memory of a little girl haunt him all these years?  
By drinking his blood, I had a window into his mind and memories I couldn’t have gained otherwise. Now that I was safe, I could sort through them. He had been a foreigner in a confusing, muddled city full of people, yet he felt so alone. I was a second generation immigrant. I earned the right to call myself American because I had the happy accident of being born on American soil. English was my only language. I already had a huge leg up compared to the other children in my gang.  
Mickey had been born on Russian soil and was expected to abandon it and adopt a new nation. It must not have been easy for him. Whether he had initially been shy or not, he had the cards stacked against him as a child in Chicago. The most extroverted and domineering person could easily become withdrawn and ostracized in a new environment amongst English speakers. His parents didn’t wait for him to learn the language before they sailed away. He didn’t have the savvy skills his sister naturally had learning. Russian is a Slavic language, an entirely different branch in the family tree. No wonder he spoke so little.  
And when he did speak, it was only to me. It broke my heart that he had such fond, romanticized images of me in his brain as the neurons sparked for the last time. Other children had bullied him unless he gave them a good punch. I didn’t care that he couldn’t speak English. I didn’t care if he was Jew, a Christian, a Russian, or an American. I was the only one. I didn’t know it then, but I knew it now. That had meant everything to him.  
I was his only friend in the world, and when he heard that I was sick with the flu, it had devastated him. He didn’t believe I could die. I had never been sick and stood up to boys and girls twice my size and got up again if I was struck down. He expected me to return to our street corner. He waited for me faithfully for months and saved a bar of chocolate for me, but I never returned. No one could tell him what had become of me.  
It was a long time before he opened up to anyone again. He learned English gradually because he had no choice. Eventually he found a mentor that gave him his factory job so he could support his sister. She had met a man, married, and gotten pregnant, but her husband couldn’t find employment. Mickey had become the provider for his sister’s family precisely because the factory had a lot of Russians working there and Mickey could rally them like no one else could. He had finally found a voice and his confidence and had become an overseer of a large team of men. Now that he was dead, I didn’t know what would happen to his family.  
I heard a scraping of talons at my door and let my Maker into the room reluctantly. He allowed a stretch of silence to go by, offering me comfort with his presence. He didn’t bombard me with questions. It was plain that I had experienced something traumatic.  
“I had to kill him,” I knew Vito could discern who I meant. “At least, I don’t think I had a choice. He recognized me and would have exposed me.”  
“You certainly did what you had to do. If he had exposed you, another vampire would have tried to silence him and cover up the entire matter. Unfortunately, we do not have the magic power to make our victims forget.”  
“Have you ever had to kill someone you knew or loved?”  
“I have,” Vito sighed, “though not someone I knew from my own lifetime. I had to kill mortals like Herman sooner or later. Not all of them, but a few of them began to suspect what I was and tried to blackmail me or destroy me. It is an inevitable reality that we are predators and the prey doesn’t want to play their part in that game. I do not blame them, but we cannot blame ourselves for our role either. “  
“It we are monsters that kill beautiful and sentient creatures like humans, what are we doing here?” I said flatly.  
“Why are there predators in nature at all?” Vito fired back. “Humans feel no guilt when they cull the population of cows and pigs. Wolves don’t either. Even herbivorous animals kill each other for mating and territory rights but no one in their right mind would accuse an animal of murder. I would be lying if I said I never felt qualms killing mortals. It is part of the reason I go so long without drinking and the reason some vampires self-annihilate. Remember that as time passes you will need blood less and less. Do not torture yourself, Alex. As long as you don’t kill with malice, you are not a monster. I am proud of you.”  
I was surprised at that and looked at him with confusion.  
“I am glad you have a conscience. When you killed your father-“  
“That’s because I hated the bastard and still do!”  
“Ironically, he may never have cried ‘vampire’ on you.”  
“You think my father cared for me enough to accept that I was a vampire?”  
“Maybe, maybe not. The point I am making is that you are feeling guilt for the wrong murder and the wrong reasons. I admit I was concerned for your soul then. Now I am concerned for your life.”  
I laughed bitterly and showed him my hands, “Do you really think we have souls and lives? We are vampires.”  
“Do human serial killers have souls? Does the bear hunting salmon have a soul or the fish in the waters that he eats from? Does God judge a farmer for every worm and insect he eviscerates in the soil planting his corn and wheat? Does he keep a tally of every antelope that a pride of lions tears into so that they can survive another day? I could go on and on.”  
“I just wish I knew why it had to be Mickey that saw me. Was that some sort of cruel trick?”  
“It was no one’s fault. Sometimes there is no special reason or purpose. There is a proverb by the Buddha. If a man is shot from the trees of a forest with an arrow, he does not go looking for his attacker to ask why. He is bleeding and dying! Knowing the where, who, and the why would be nice, but in the moment, it’s all terribly irrelevant! He needs treatment first. There is no time to search a deep, dark forest for answers he might not even like to hear. Even the Christians admit God’s plans are beyond comprehension so why waste time trying to understand? All we non-deities can do is to react to the plan or mistakes and survive!”  
“Vito, I don’t care about your Buddhist psalms, sutras, or whatever you call them! Why can’t you just say that you are sorry I killed my friend, tell me that he is in a better place, and that it’s not my fault and leave it at that!”  
“Those are empty platitudes if I ever heard them, for worse and dull than the driest and most ancient texts of the Torah or Hindu texts. Furthermore, you and I both know it’s not what you want to hear. Every being cringes internally at those slavish and brainless responses but they smile and nod knowing the person that said it means well. They are comforting lies, just like children expecting Saint Nicholas to visit every Christmas with his list of good and bad children.”  
“I never believed in Santa!” I boasted.  
“Doubting Thomasine,” Vito chuckled. “Saint Nicholas was a real man. You see? No one really wants to know the truth.”  
“Instead of helping me, you just want to play games and guilt me about my father.”  
“Because you need to make peace with both deaths here: Mickey’s and your father’s. I have been a father and had a few fathers of my own. Fatherhood is difficult. Why do you think I refused to have you associate me with that role?”  
“Did you say you had a few fathers?”  
“My real father died when I was young. My mother said some fever took him. I was raised by a stepfather. I loved that man, but he also died and my mother took a third husband. I was already twelve by then, and this man thought he could order me around, so I resented my new stepfather. I can’t tell you how many beatings I got from him. As soon as I could, I left his house and started my own family. It was only when raising my children that I realized what a tough job it was. I started to understand why my late father was always so tired and angry. You remember your father as a petty criminal that drank too much. Well, I am going to let you in on a little secret, Alex.”  
I raised my eyebrows and moved my ear a little closer in an exaggerated gesture.  
“A father always feels like a powerless failure. When the children are young they usually cry for their mothers. When they are older that is when they start seeking their father. But what if father was never kind and never provided? Even good fathers fail or grow frustrated. I scratched the soil of my lordling’s farm just enough to feed my sons and daughters, but by the time they were old enough to befriend me, they didn’t care to know me. I had been too busy or distracted with other things to get to know them. The father is the person of the household that is to be respected, not loved. That attitude is slowly fading, but that was how it was expected to be.”  
“At least you cared and provided. My father didn’t work and left mother and I to die.”  
“Your mother and father tried to have children after you and that never happened, did it? You saw your mother cry and pray. Your father drank. He probably blamed himself as much as she blamed herself. He found no work in Italy so he stole money to bring you and your mother here. The greatest myth of this modern age is that the streets of America are paved with gold and that everyone had equal opportunity. Your father was a Roman Catholic with no education, experience, or networking skills. He felt like a failure in every way. He robbed to survive and killed men to avoid jail and death. You killed Mickey so that you would not be put to death. You kill to survive. “  
“That doesn’t have to be all that I do, though,” I said with sudden realization.  
Vito smiled a thin smile with colorless lips and gums that were barely pink.  
“I remember you said that I needed a human connection. I suppose I don’t have family, but that doesn’t have to stop me. He might not have been my family, but Mickey’s sister and her family will certainly need all the help they can get. Also, I have one more question, Vito. How familiar with Russian are you?”  
“Not as familiar as I should be. It would be nice to converse with Vladimir and Mishka in their native language. They’re as linguistic as I am, though, so they have never paid it any mind. You need me to translate something for you?”  
“Yes. Mickey said something like: Spasibo tebe, za to chto ty moy drug. Those were his last words. What do they mean?”  
He shrugged, “Write it down. Best ask Mishka and Vladimir someday.”  
I wrote the words down, thinking I’d probably find a Russian dictionary long before I saw our vampire friends and translate the words myself, but I got distracted.  
The next morning I managed to track down Mickey’s sister and husband. I left a donation of money in their mail with fake documents that it came from a life insurance policy that he had taken out and made them the beneficiaries of. This was one family that would not suffer through the Great Depression as others did. I made certain of it. It was the least I could do for them.  
Mickey’s sister Olga took her brother’s death hard. They had been very close, made closer once I disappeared from his life. The only real comfort in his death was that he had no widow or children to leave behind. Instead there was only his niece Barbara. The little girl was four years old and looked more like her uncle than either of her parents, so that was disturbing to see. I dropped in on the family from time to time, trying my best to observe from a comfortable distance. Their street soon became the safest street in all of Chicago. They had a guardian devil with red hair watching over them, after all. No innocents were harmed and would-be criminals were eliminated. I also sent a Christmas gift to Barbara every year anonymously, signing the packages as Santa. Some of those gifts included a Shirley Temple doll and a slinky. It made me extremely happy whenever I peered into their window or saw the little girl on the street playing with them.  
If Vito disapproved of my pathetic and desperate attempt at redemption, he never said a word. In fact, I’m certain he was actually quite proud of me and would have told me it wasn’t pathetic or desperate at all. I didn’t do it just to salve my conscience either. I would grow very attached to Barbara and it felt good to be absorbed in someone other than myself and my Maker. Barbara was a child that I would have the privilege of watching grow up. I was excited to see what she would become. Maybe she could have all the things that I couldn’t. 

In December of 1933 Prohibition was repealed. I thought for sure now was the time for Vito to eliminate Herman. What use was a bootlegger to us now that liquor was no longer illegal or enormously lucrative? Vito insisted he was still useful after all. I wondered how much longer he could justify this odd relationship.  
“Alright, fine,” I joked. “If you won’t kill him in the morning, I will.”  
“Do it and I will disown you!” Vito smacked me with a newspaper.  
“The next day, then, or whenever I happen to get hungry. Whichever comes first.”  
“Get your own human!”  
“I think you are in love! Are you planning to turn him eventually? That must be it! Am I finally going to get a little brother?”  
I hung on my Maker’s shoulders and started belting a jazz tune until he slapped me with the paper again. I pretended it hurt and released crocodile tears.  
“There is always something illegal to sell,” Vito said. “Herman and I will procure something else.”  
“Hasn’t he started asking questions about me yet?” I became serious. “You know questions like: When is your daughter going to grow up?”  
Vito’s smile faded, “He has never brought it up.”  
“Are you really going to wait until he does? Or should I take myself from his sight?”  
“What do you mean by that?”  
“I mean should I leave? Should I try to be on my own for a while?”  
“Do you want to leave me?”  
I looked closely at my Maker. He was studying me harder, trying to make his face blank, but I didn’t need to read his face. We had been together for fifteen years now. He had told me not to call him father, but whenever we were in public together and mortals asked, I would clutch his hand and call him father all the time. Sometimes he squeezed my hand when I did it. He pretended it was to show annoyance at the term, but I knew it was because he secretly enjoyed it. In every sense of the word, he was my father and I was his daughter now.  
“Do you want me to leave?” I whispered. “I would have been twenty-five if I was human. Most little girls are women and long gone from home at that age. But you and I both know I am not a little girl. I am not a woman either. I’m Alex, your fledgling. When do fledglings leave their Makers?”  
“Some never do. It is not the same as a parent-child relationship. Not at all. “  
“Do you think I could survive out there alone?”  
“We don’t have to answer that question now.”  
“I suppose that’s fine. I’ve grown quite used to you.”  
“Used to me? Is that all?”  
“Well I don’t hate you. Isn’t that a miracle compared to most relationships between our kind?”  
“It’s definitely the exception but not always the rule. Just picture Vladimir and Mishka. Those two have been together for centuries now.”  
“Aw. When will we get to see them again?”  
“Soon, I hope.”  
“It’s never soon enough. Is it possible that I can write them?”  
“Are you lonely, my child?”  
“I crave the camaraderie of fellow vampires, yes.”  
“I will give you one of their addresses. Remember to code your message and maybe they will chance upon it. Don’t expect fast replies, though.”  
“I won’t.”  
“Very well.”  
“Des Moines, Iowa?” I repeated the address with incredulity.  
“That’s the last place they told me to send postcards, some random place in America. You heard them say they didn’t like Chicago.”  
“Yeah, but Iowa? I would have guessed somewhere in or near Canada. Wouldn’t they be more at home in Canada?”  
“Ask them yourself.”  
Becoming pen pals with Vladimir and Mishka was good for me. I kept my messages in code, even though all of our exchanges were harmless and we addressed each other by aliases or initials only. The vampire couple was always kind and thoughtful with their responses, though it took months for me to get them at best.  
I suspected that Mishka wrote the letters out. She used a lovely perfume and had a beautiful, flowing script with gold ink and it was the same handwriting every time. My first letter to them was short and clumsy.  
Dear M and VL,  
It’s Wendy here. How do you like the more rustic side of America? What parts of the country do you want to see? My tour with V was amazing, but the U.S. is huge and there is so much to see and do. If we took a decade, we’d still never see everything within it. Have you all thought about going to Canada? You should at least see Niagara Falls. It’s right at the border between Canada and America. They say it’s romantic. Maybe VL would like that? Is he the romantic type?  
P.S. I’m sending you a travel book with this letter. Hope you like it.  
Their response came a month later.  
Dear Wendy,  
It’s good to hear that you enjoyed your tour and thank you for the travel book. You must tell us where V took you. Did you avoid Germany like we told you to? He likes to disobey our advice sometimes. How is he? VL and I have a mind to see the deserts of the West and palm trees in the South, though we have considered Canada. The weather might be more agreeable. The two of us are more used to colder temperatures. Niagara Falls sounds lovely. VL agreed it should be on our list at some time in the near future. He is a bit homesick, but we enjoy traveling. We may be traveling and working for some time.  
P.S. Tell V not to change his address and we sent you a collection of sea shells and other ocean trinkets we collected from a black beach! Hope you delight in it!  
I sent a letter after rewriting the thing a dozen times, anxious.  
Dear M and VL,  
I made a necklace out of the sea shells you sent! It’s pretty! Let me know when you’ve seen Niagara! What is a black beach? It sounds interesting. We did avoid Germany just like you asked. V is doing just fine, except he’s feeding less and less. Should I be concerned about that? I had a favor to ask as well, if you don’t mind doing some translating for me. I had a young man say something to me in Russian lately. Vito had no idea what it meant. The words were something like: Spasibo tebe, za to chto ty moy drug. Could you please tell me what that means? I know a dictionary would serve, but I wanted more context than a book can give me.  
P.S. Since you said VL was homesick, I found a Russian doll to send you.  
Their answer came much quicker than their last one.  
Dear Wendy,  
Thank you for the doll. VL actually adored it. Believe it or not, he collects them. A black beach is one that is created with a volcano nearby. The sediments from the lava settle and thus create black sand. I wouldn’t be too concerned about V. He is getting on in age and needs to feed less than the three of us. Just don’t let him go for more than a month, if you can help it. He could go for two or three, but it’s probably not safe.  
As for the translation job you gave us: Thank you for being my best friend. That is what those words meant. Whoever said it to you, you should consider yourself lucky. Finding and keeping a friend is risky and difficult business in our country, especially now. If a Rooskie calls you their friend, we mean it from the bottom of our heart. The phrase has just a tad more meaning to it than it does in English. That’s just the way it seems to us. If you want more context, you will have to give us more details. Maybe that’s the sort of thing you don’t want to put in a letter.

I mourned all over again for Mickey when I read those words. I developed my relationship with Vladimir and Mishka from a distance while I dabbled in human relationships closer to home. I started to crave more than simple observation of Barbara. Mickey’s niece was almost nine now, closer to my age when I died and became Undead. She was growing up so fast and she seemed like so much fun! She was like her mother, not her uncle, when it came to her personality. She was bubbly and warm and inspired the inner child in me. Since I was still in a child’s body, I decided what was the harm in indulging?  
Whenever Barbara went to the public pool or the park, I found a way to join in on her games. I never allowed her parents to see me and told her my name was Wendy. She was none the wiser. We played Chinese Checkers in the park and Marco Polo in the pool. We climbed trees and read books to each other. I helped her with her schoolwork. She showed off her Shirley Temple doll to me. It was hard not to tell her I was her Secret Santa all those years. She was a sweet girl and mine, in a way.  
“You are my best friend, Wendy,” she whispered in my ear as we lounged together in our favorite tree. “Don’t tell anyone else. Am I yours?”  
“You’re my only real friend, Barbara,” I told her. “Don’t tell anyone.”  
“I won’t. I cross my heart and hope to die.”  
“Cross your heart, that’s fine. I don’t want you to ever die. I want you to live to be an old maid and have lots of babies someday. Playing with dolls for the time being is nice, though.”  
I began meeting Barbara almost every evening and keeping her up almost past her bed time. When her family moved to a different street, she was in tears, afraid that she’d never see her best friend again. I got worried at first, but I felt enormous relief when she assured me that she was not leaving Chicago. Any kind of move seems huge to a child, though. She was genuinely amazed when I made the trip across town to see her anyway. I seemed so grown up knowing my way around and knowing how to nab free rides!  
Our friendship had been going on for over two years when Vito finally said something. I came home late after having a long heart-to-heart with Barbara. She was nearing twelve years old and was starting to think about boys. I was glad that she was out of her baking and sewing stage. I despised anything to do with food and sewing was painfully dull.  
“Did Barbara get her period or something?” Vito asked with irritation when I walked into our flat.  
“No. She’s too young for that still.”  
“No she isn’t. Mortal girls have been getting their womanhood much sooner than in my time. And when she gets it, are you going to tell her lies about why you haven’t gotten yours?”  
“I’ll tell her I haven’t gotten mine yet and it won’t be a lie. What is wrong with you?”  
I said that with genuine concern because my Maker was clearly unwell. He was ghastly pale, his eyes bruised, his hair thin, and his skin was dry, flaky, and peeling. He was all bones and thin, stretched skin. He had not been feeding. I realized with horror that I couldn’t remember the last time he had fed. He had obviously gone too long. Even his voice was weak and shaky, but he seemed oblivious. All he could focus on was chiding me.  
“Do you intend to make that girl one of us?”  
“What? Of course not! Do you intend to make Herman one of us?” I fired the question I had asked before again. “How the hell hasn’t he figured out that there’s something wrong with me yet? Or with you!”  
“We are not discussing that, we are talking about you!”  
“Didn’t you tell me to find a human connection? Barbara is that, so get your nose out of my business and eat someone, will you? You’re scaring me, father.”  
Vito started to turn a shade of purple, the first color I had seen in him in weeks. It was too much for him. He collapsed and I screamed his name. I cradled his head in my hands and curled his lips back, prying open his jaws.  
“You idiot!” I yelled at him as I slashed the vein in my wrist and howled in pain. “You idiot! You may have killed yourself! I’m not going to lose you. I’m not!”  
I put my wrist in his mouth. He needed blood, any blood. I didn’t have time to fetch anything else. If only Herman had been around to make himself useful. I had to dig my nails into my own flesh to keep the wound from healing too fast. Did I mention that it was painful? Adrenaline, no doubt, took away most of the pain, but I had never self-inflicted before.  
Vito almost choked, but eventually, painfully, he began to gain consciousness. He bit into my wrist involuntarily and drank deep. Now I was crying out in fear. I had a small frame and tiny veins. I didn’t have too much blood to give him. His blood lust was kicking in a little too late. I slugged him hard with my free hand, trying to knock myself free from the latch of his fangs. My wrist was swelling and turning ugly shades.  
“Vito!” my voice was growing hoarse. “Father! Maker! Stop! It’s Alex! You need to feed, but on someone else!”  
My eyelids grew heavy because he didn’t stop right away. I thought I saw myself in that hospital bed again all those years ago, dying of the flu. I experienced again that awful, sinking, sickening feeling of my blood being drained.  
“I’m about to be killed by my own Maker,” I whispered as I passed out.  
That was when Vito finally snapped himself out of the brutal blood trance he had been in. He dropped me and realized his surroundings and situation probably just in time. He was weak himself still, but he managed to get out of the flat and break one of his only rules. He found a victim and lured them back to the flat. I awoke with blood siphoning through my lips and teeth. I coughed up a bubble of blood.  
“Alex, thank God!” Vito sighed with sweet relief.  
I wiped my mouth and licked the red stains on my skin, “Vito? I’m freezing.”  
He threw a blanket over me and went to draw hot water, stumbling the entire way. I turned my head to the grisly sight of a man hanging upside down on our ceiling. Vito had sliced his throat and collected his blood like rainwater into jugs and every piece of glassware we owned. As I gaped, Vito returned and lifted me up like a sack of potatoes. As I protested, he tossed me into the tub full of hot water, clothes and all still on. I screamed fresh screams and cursed in every language that I knew. The water was scalding hot.  
“Forgive me Lilith, Unholy and Holy Mother,” Vito was praying desperately and crying blood tears. “I have fasted too long and almost killed you! “  
“What? Are you talking to me?” I splashed at him.  
He continued to pray in Latin now. My skin had adjusted to the temperature of the water and I let myself sink into the tub, exhausted and still feeling drained. I wanted to get out to comfort my Maker. I had never seen Vito truly cry before. I was the one always crying and making mistakes and needing guidance. I curled my little fingers around the edge of the tub and peered at him.  
“Vito! Vito!” I called.  
He didn’t answer. I crawled out of the tub and collected one of the bowls of blood and put it to his lips. He finally seemed to see me.  
“It’s alright, Vito,” I managed to smile. “I forgive you. You didn’t mean to hurt me and I know that. Here, you need this more than I do. Drink.”  
He chugged the lukewarm blood in one gulp and I brought him the next container of blood and the next and the next. After every drop was ingested, he still seemed to be a bit cracked. He sobbed and curled up into a fetal position. I put the blanket over him and looked at the body still hanging and the mess of blood all over the flat. Vito had collected a lot of blood, but there was too much wasted. I would have to clean it up. I didn’t feel restored, but I knew it needed to be done as soon as possible.  
It took hours of tedious work and I wasn’t sure if I could move the body inconspicuously by myself unless I cut it up. I really, really didn’t feel like doing that. I got lazy and stuffed the body into a closet.  
I collapsed beside Vito, “We need to go feed. Now.”  
“Yes.”  
I took his hand and we claimed three more victims in that single night. To be fair, Vito had probably not fed in months. He almost looked like himself again.  
“Promise me this is not going to happen again!” I slugged his shoulder. “You scared me!”  
“Scared you?” he said with shame. “I almost killed you!”  
“You might have died if I hadn’t risked feeding you myself! Why do you keep doing this to yourself? Why do you stop eating for so long? What are you fasting about? Does Lilith make you do it?”  
“No. I was hoping for something to happen. Do you know why ancient shamans started fasting?”  
“No, but you are going to tell me anyway.”  
“They realized that going for a long time without food can cause visions.”  
“Hallucinations, you mean. You need to find other ways to get spiritually high. You haven’t stepped in church or synagogue since you stopped delivering booze. We need to keep a cage of rats or something so if you get that bad, there’s at least something to keep real death away from you.”  
“We also need to get rid of all these bodies. And probably move.”  
“Can we burn our rooms and contain the fire so that it doesn’t destroy the whole building? There are a lot of bloodstains, and you know that doesn’t wash out.”  
“We’ll have to try.”  
“We don’t have to leave Chicago, do we? Maybe we could move closer to Barbara.”  
Vito winced, “Are you sure you are being careful with this girl and her family?”  
I nodded enthusiastically, “Oh yes. You know I won’t let any harm come to Mickey’s relatives. When I say close, I don’t mean the house next door. We have enough money we can buy a private home.”  
“More than enough,” Vito agreed. “Herman can get us a deed.”  
“I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t kill him like I keep telling you to do.”  
We actually stayed in Herman’s home while they went about the business of buying real estate. While they were gone, I wrote a long letter to Vladimir and Mishka. It was risky to put all I was feeling into a letter, but I didn’t know what else to do. I really had no one else to turn to.  
Dear M and VL,  
I don’t know how to put this, but I need help or something. For years now, I have been getting more and more worried for V. He doesn’t go to churches or temples anymore. He rambles on and on about, well, about Her. L. That’s the incoherent stuff. If he’s not talking about that, he’s obsessing over meaningless and countless rituals of other cultures and religions. He used to try to educate me about these things. Now he just wants me to play altar boy or shrine maiden with only instructions on how to play my part in the ceremony as he paces around, praying or burning incense with no explanation. We all know V has his weird quirks, especially about religion, but he’s destabilizing. I know it.  
He keeps forgetting to feed. He almost died the other day and I almost got killed saving him. I can’t force him to eat. What am I supposed to do? With every passing day, I feel more like the Maker and he is becoming the fledgling. Is V just going mad? Is this what we all do when our kind start to become ancient? Is there any cure? Should I find the Council? Would they know what to do?  
P.S. Should probably burn this letter when you get it.  
Their reply came urgently, and it was short and blunt.  
We’re coming. Stay put. Wait.

“Do you want more tea, Barbara?” I asked.  
“Yes please!”  
I filled her dainty little cup with lavender tea and put an extra lemon cookie on her plate.  
“Don’t you want more cookies?”  
“Oh, no, that’s alright.”  
I took a sip from my own cup. I was enjoying an evening tea party with Mickey’s niece in the park. I made sure that my cups were only full of harmless water. That would go down much easier in my system. I crumbled the cookies when my human friend wasn’t looking and tossed them to the birds.  
I had gone a bit overboard with the party, but I was swelling with pride, and Barbara seemed to enjoy every minute of it. Vito had become obsessed with tea ceremonies in general and forced me and Herman to indulge him in all kinds of tea parties from the complicated Japanese tea ceremony to the more informal British parties. I had brought one of our many fancy tea sets with a plethora of floral scented teas, since the smells wafting from the food and drink was all I could enjoy. I loved the jasmine and lavender teas the most.  
Barbara had made the lemon cookies and invited her doll along as a third guest. I would never have been caught alive doing this sort of thing, but I was dead and loving it because I was with Barbara.  
“What’s wrong?” she looked at me with concern. I must have startled or betrayed something with my eyes. I lied that everything was fine, but it wasn’t. I sensed an odd presence and it was coming closer and closer. I had only felt something similar a couple times before, and that was when I was in the presence of other vampires. The problem was that it didn’t feel like Vladimir and Mishka. It wasn’t Vito either. No, this was someone or something far more ancient and malevolent.  
I gazed behind and beyond Barbara and saw a man sitting on a bench nearby. He was dressed in a fine suit of silver gray. He wore a Homburg hat to match his clothes over a bald head. His skin was a beautiful caramel color, his cheeks sand-blasted and his eyes were brown, but a color of brown I had never seen before. They took on an eerie, almost orange colored glow in the dark. His eyes captured mine and his lips curled into a smile immediately as he gestured to me.  
“Uh, Barbara,” I swallowed hard, “I think I have to go.”  
“Why?” she pouted.  
“It’s getting late. You should actually go join your parents. They’re not far, right?”  
“Yes.”  
“Well, call them over. I’m sure they’d like to have tea with you and Shirley.”  
“Ok. Bye, Wendy.”  
I stared at the strange man as I slowly rose to my feet. Who was he and what did he want? I knew he must be old and powerful. Maybe he was angry that I was walking around with mortals and without my Maker? If so, I was probably in grave danger and should run. I took a few steps away from Barbara. I wanted to put at least some distance between her and myself before I tried to make a break for it. Vito’s warnings about other vampires were whistling and buzzing in my ears. If he was a powerful vampire, did I have a ghost of a chance?  
“Alex!” the man called and I could feel the blood in my body curdle with terror. “Come!”  
“How do you-“  
“I am related to you, in a way. I suppose you could call me your Grand-Maker.”  
“What?”  
I stared into the man’s sphinx-like face in bewilderment. He walked toward me and I seemed paralyzed. I didn’t know if that was from my sheer fright or if this vampire was using ancient super-powers on me. Maybe it was both.  
“I really wouldn’t run if I were you,” the vampire said softly. “We shouldn’t alarm the mortals. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to that little girl and her parents.”  
“Don’t you dare hurt Barbara or Olga!” my anger and protectiveness got the better of my fear for a moment.  
“Believe me, I don’t want to. There is no reason for me to want to harm them.”  
“Then why would you threaten them like that!”  
“I just don’t want you to attempt something stupid like running away. I have come to fetch you, child. I have already acquired my fledgling from your house. It is time that our little family became acquainted.”  
“What have you done to Vito?” I began trembling.  
“Nothing compared to what will be done with him,” the vampire’s eyes and tone became hard as stone. “I am afraid that his time to answer for his many crimes is overdue.”  
My eyes were rimmed with blood tears. So a day of reckoning had snuck itself upon me and my Maker. I realized that there was no escaping this. The both of us were probably doomed.  
“Can I say goodbye to Barbara?” I strangled out the words. “It’s just a goodbye. I promise.”  
“You already did. Come.”  
“I want to hug her. I want-“  
“It is done!”  
I nodded and cleared my throat, “Fine. I will follow you.”  
He led me away from the park and toward a cab. It might as well have been a funeral hearse. He opened the door for me and I flopped down on the seat. My Grand-Maker sat beside me and I tried not to look at him for a long time. I was too afraid, though I had millions of questions to ask. I felt him staring holes into me. I tried to focus on the traffic and streets going by instead of imagining whatever horrors were surely in store for me.  
“The sooner you tell me what I need to know, Alex,” he spoke, “and the more forthcoming you are, the easier this will be on everyone.”  
“Who is everyone?” I stubbornly stared out the window.  
“For me, for Vitalo, and for yourself, of course.”  
I had never heard anyone call my Maker ‘Vitalo’ before, even though he had told me that was his name the first night we met. It caught me a little by surprise. I wondered what had been done to him already and the resentment crept into my tone. I couldn’t help myself. It didn’t matter to me if I came off as snarky.  
“I don’t even know who you are! Why should I tell you anything? You are probably going to kill me anyway!”  
“Do I have reason to kill you?”  
“I don’t know! I’m sure that you will find a reason, won’t you?”  
“Alex, I have been hunting for my erroneous fledgling for years. I didn’t even know you existed until an hour ago. Vitalo never came to the Council to ask permission to make you so how could we know? It is yet another crime to add to the list. I must deal with him first.”  
“What has he done? What are you going to do to him?” I cried.  
“Your Maker never told you?”  
“No!” I was already getting hysterical.  
“Did he even tell you my name?”  
“Honestly, no!”  
My Grand-Maker snorted and took me by the chin, “Best you look at me then when I tell you my name. Names are powerful. I am Senenmut.”  
I blinked in confusion, “Are you Egyptian?”  
He smiled in admiration, “Good guess! I suppose my skin color and name must give it away and Vitalo knew you were clever?”  
I couldn’t help but be enthralled and fire more questions. Vito and I had never been to Egypt yet, but when I was in the library reading Egyptian myths, I had become fascinated. The Egyptian gods, dynasties, history, culture, art, and temples were some of the most poignant and haunting things I had ever come across. I wished that Vito had told me before he had been made by an ancient Egyptian!  
“How old are you? Where in Egypt are you from? What did you do? Were you a pharaoh?”  
Senenmut’s smile faded, “Perhaps we shouldn’t speak about me or try to become friends yet. You may find it impossible to like me after what I may have to do in the next few hours.”  
I broke away from his grasp and gaze. I felt cold dread as we rode on in silence. I bitterly thought to myself I was not in a cab with my Grand-Maker or grandfather. I was riding with my personal grim reaper to some sort of hellish trial and judgment and I could do nothing about it.  
We drove to an abandoned warehouse where there had been illegal stills and barrels of booze during the Prohibition. I felt the presence of other powerful and ancient vampires long before we arrived. I could also sense Vito and had a faint hope that he was alright. Dozens came out to greet Senenmut and me. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of vampires. I had only ever met two others of our kind my entire Unlife. Now I realized that I must be staring some of the most elite in the face and I was dressed for a child’s tea party. I tried to hide behind my Grand-Maker. None of the others looked happy to see me at all.  
“What is this abomination?” one of the vampires shouted upon sight of me. “What has Vitalo done?”  
“It’s a child-vampire!” there came another outburst from someone else.  
“Is there nothing sacred left? Is there any rule that he did not break!” there was more.  
“Oh, Jesus, I’m dog meat aren’t I?” I whispered to myself.  
To my surprise, Senenmut wrapped his arms around my ribs and led me forth under his protection, declaring, “This one is not on trial yet! As Vitalo’s fledgling, legal or not, she is needed to bear witness to her Maker’s crimes!”  
“Oh no.”  
I was grateful he was going to stop them all from trying to harm me, but I didn’t like what he said one bit. He led me into the warehouse, past the dusty stills and vats and barrels. He brought me to Vito, manacled, pale, and blood-stained. I slumped at his side and grabbed him in my arms immediately.  
“Father!”  
“Alex!” his voice was thin and weak.  
I chomped into my wrist to feed him. It was my first instinct, but Senenmut pulled me away.  
“I am afraid interrogation is in order, my dear,” he said with a touch of sadness.  
“Wait! Can’t you just ask us questions before you get medieval on us?” I cried desperately.  
“Vitalo, why don’t you start by telling your fledgling the truth?” Senenmut turned to him. “You start explaining, or I will.”  
“Leave her out of this!” Vito begged. “Alex has nothing to do with anything that I did! I kept her in the dark because I knew this would happen! Please, Maker!”  
“You revoked the privilege of calling me that over a century ago.”  
My Grand-Maker simply removed his hat and sat down on the floor in the classic scribe pose that I had seen so many times in Egyptian sculpture and art. Half a dozen vampires surrounded us.  
There was an Asian vampiress with distinctive gray eyes wearing a lab coat and a yakuza tattoo visible on the back of her neck. There was a dark-skinned bear of a vampire dressed all in white with blue eyes and some sort of tribal scarring on his face. There was a vampiress wearing an Indian sari with long, braided brown locks, a blonde and blue eyed vampire that could have been from anywhere in Europe, a vampire that looked like he was from Brazil, and another that looked like he was from China. He gave Senenmut a scribe’s palette and tools.  
“The year is 1935, January 6th according to the English calendar,” Senenmut began transcribing. “The accused is Vitalo of Montaione. The required six witnesses to the interrogation are?”  
“Sunako.”  
“Wanjohi.”  
“Yamini.”  
“Nathan.”  
“Joao.”  
“Kuo.”  
The other vampires in the room, I could only assume they were Elders of the Council chosen for this procedure, all recited their names. Sunako, the one in the lab coat, had brought delicate needles and other medical instruments with her. Wanjohi, the scarred vampire, followed her in a similar way that Vladimir and Mishka always followed each other. Yamini and Nathan merely stared with their arms crossed, and Joao and Kuo looked like they would rather be anywhere else.  
“Why does Vito look like he’s been tortured already?” I demanded.  
“Because I worked on him,” Sunako raised her hand, her voice like silk. “We knew he couldn’t have lived in that house alone. There were signs of you everywhere. He refused to cooperate. I have ways.”  
“I’m sure you do,” I shuddered.  
Kuo left the room for a moment. Senenmut was carefully writing down every word spoken, his eyes never leaving his parchments. When Kuo returned, he had brought two chairs that you might see at a dentist’s office with him but no one cared to sit in them. When I looked closer, I saw that they had straps on them and were more for restraint than comfort.  
“Why don’t you start confessing your crimes to your fledgling, Vitalo?” Senenmut sounded impatient when he said it almost word-for-word a second time.  
“I already confessed! “  
“Tell her, not us! Besides, repetition confirms the accuracy of your statements. Maybe you forgot a few of your sins. You love confession so much when you are not the one that has to confess, priest.”  
Vito looked at me, his eyes brewing with more than physical pain, “I pillaged the Library of Lilith after I was excommunicated. I wounded some of the Keepers. I left forged copies that were quickly found out. I sold forged papers and artifacts to collectors around the world shamelessly keeping originals for myself. I wanted mortals to learn about Lilith indirectly. I was searching for scientific evidence of her existence. I kept these things hidden from you. I think now that we are here, you know why. I am so sorry, my child.”  
I didn’t know what to say. I merely closed my eyes and sighed deeply. I had guessed that he had committed some sort of crime like this and I didn’t need my Grand-Maker to tell me that these must be high crimes indeed.  
“He said he only wounded other vampires, right?”  
“Yes, or else, we would have hunted him down immediately.”  
“Why didn’t you?” I jerked my head toward the Council members accusingly. “How long did it take for you to track him down?”  
“We do not have to answer any questions of yours, abomination!” Yamini hissed.  
“What is your full name, Alex?” my Grand-Maker began questioning me, completely disregarding anything that the other vampires said or did.  
“Alexandria Filice.”  
“When were you born, Alexandria?”  
“1908. And call me Alex.”  
“Alex, what was the year that you were turned without our consent or knowledge?”  
“1918.”  
“So in mortal years you would be at least twenty-seven today and you have been a vampire for seventeen. Is that correct?”  
I nodded, realized he couldn’t hear that, and said loudly, “Yes!”  
“Well, then, you couldn’t have participated in his initial crimes. He raided the Library of Lilith in 1890. That was almost thirty years before he made you. After he made you, did he tell you anything about his further activities? Did you witness anything suspicious?”  
For a brief moment, I thought of Vladimir and Mishka and the briefcase Vito had given them in Russia. I wondered if Vito had already told them about the couple and swore to myself I wouldn’t be the one to betray them.  
“He told me a little bit about the priesthood of Lilith and Cain, but honestly, I thought all of that was doubly rubbish.”  
“Lilith and Cain, rubbish!” scoffed Nathan with indignation. “It seems Vitalo taught the girl nothing but sacrilege!”  
“What exactly did he tell you? You must try to remember every word.”  
“He didn’t speak at all about Cain. He mentioned Lilith. He spoke of her as though she was the prime goddess of this vampire cult you all fabricated. He said that she was the mother of vampires, or maybe the first vampiress like Eve was the first woman. Or maybe she wasn’t even a vampire. He never really made any of that clear or I just didn’t care. I read mortal stories about her being the literal bride of the Devil or Adam’s first wife who was thrown out and replaced with Eve. There were older stories saying she had been a pagan goddess long before. He would pray to her. He said that there were rules and tenets. She was wisdom personified. He mentioned Sophia. What more do you want me to say?”  
“Her ignorance would be funny if it wasn’t so sad,” Kuo said. “Maybe Vitalo is telling the truth. Maybe he really did tell her nothing on purpose.”  
“Alright, that’s enough for now, child,” Senenmut paused his writing to pierce Vito with his reproachful eyes. “What other crime did you commit?”  
“I ran from punishment. I jumped from place to place, country to country, sea to shining sea, evading the Council and their contacts and spies. I was considered one of you, so I knew more than I should have.”  
“What else?”  
“I got caught,” Vito managed a wry smile.  
In spite of everything, I cracked a proud smile. Something of my Maker was still in there after all the years, all the pain of the moment, and all of the madness he had been exhibiting.  
“No. What else? Look at this child-vampire here. Are you aware that we might have to destroy her?”  
Maker and child looked at each other with such distress; even Senenmut had the grace to look guilty.  
“I made her without permission, consent, or blessing.”  
“Why?”  
It was a burning question that I wanted to know as well. Vito hesitated a long time and stared at me as he answered and addressed me.  
“I was lonely. I wanted you, Alex. Lilith told me to do it in that moment. I love you. You are my daughter and more.”  
I burst into tears and so did he. If we had been alone, I would have hugged him so tight and so long. But Wanjohi lifted me up and placed me in one of the chairs they had brought in and Sunako approached me with her needles.  
“Senenmut!” Vito protested. “What are you all doing to her?”  
“Sunako needs to take some samples of blood from you both.”  
It looked as though she was setting me up to donate blood to the Red Cross or something. Wanjohi and Kuo lifted my Maker into the other chair. Then Sunako took a blood sample from both of us.  
She mixed the blood into an eye dropper and dripped them into her own eyes carefully. She let in a sharp breath through her nose and tossed her head back. When she opened her eyes, the pupils and irises had become temporarily blood red. She opened her mouth and dropped another drop directly onto her tongue. Her jaw made an audible snapping sound as she closed her mouth and let her saliva and taste buds work.  
“I can see everything they’ve done in the last twenty-four hours,” she laughed as though she were high. “And I can see more, going back, but I can’t say when.”  
“Record everything you see.”  
She continued to giggle as she wrote beautiful flowing Japanese script upon a parchment of her own.  
“There’s a theory among the vampire scholars and scientists, you know,” she said idly as she wrote. “That the answer to our origins is in the blood, but not the way you think. Human scientists are making breakthroughs, too. But I am not talking just about blood cells. I am not talking about the nucleus or the DNA. I am talking about the bioblasts or the mitochondria, as they call them now. It is an ancient invader in our cells. Our mitochondria are different when you compare it to a human’s. Isn’t that an exciting thought?”  
“That’s all it is right now,” Senenmut said dismissively. “A thought. Are you finished?”  
“Yes.”  
She gave the script to my Grand-Maker. Of course, he must be literate in every language and writing known to mankind. His eyes went over the papers blindingly fast.  
“You still refuse to tell us where the last artifacts and tablets are. You are going to watch as we drain your child to death. Or you could talk.”  
“I thought I wasn’t the one on trial here!”  
“It has nothing to do with you, little one,” Sunako said as she placed a needle in my arm to begin extracting my blood.  
“Senenmut!” Vito struggled. “I told you everything! If you can’t find those last artifacts, it’s because I don’t know where they are! I traded and sold so many! Don’t hurt Alex!”  
“Then why does the blood say you are hiding something? You and the child! One of you will speak or one of you will die!”  
I watched as my blood began to drain from my veins, travel through the tubes, and collect in medical bags before my eyes. It was both fascinating and horrifying to watch. For the first few minutes, it didn’t seem so bad. My Maker was more panicked than I. Furthermore, I had almost been drained to the point of death before and had been practicing blood discipline. I remained calm even after I began to feel woozy and sick.  
“If only we vampires had heart beats to monitor,” Sunako said. “It would be easier to gauge how much more she can take.”  
“She’s small. She’s young. She can’t possibly take much more,” Vito begged. “I have nothing more to give you! I wish I did! Please stop this! Don’t kill my fledgling! She doesn’t deserve this and you all know it!”  
“That is a lot of blood,” Wanjohi rumbled. “I would have expected her to faint by now.”  
I was struggling not to lose consciousness. I wondered if I told them something, they’d spare me or show Vito mercy. Maybe I could lie. Maybe Vladimir and Mishka were nearby. They had said they were on their way in their last letter. And then I had a terrifying thought: Maybe they were the ones that told the Council where to find us. Maybe it was their fault that this was happening. I realized I really didn’t know much about them. They had always been Vito’s friends. They barely trusted me. They had no reason to trust me beyond their deep trust of my Maker.  
I banished those thoughts as soon as they came. Mishka and Vladimir had obviously been helping Vito with his actions against the Council. He had said before that they were within their graces but disapproved of much of their actions just like him. If they had betrayed us, they would have been here in the crowd of vampires or strapped to a chair being drained and tortured too. Senenmut said they had been hunting for Vito for decades. It had only been a matter of time.  
It had probably been something stupid, like one of our letters being stolen. It might have been the purchase of the new house that flagged attention down on us. It could have been stupid blind luck. It didn’t really matter now.  
I was determined not to talk. I focused my eyes on Vito, trying to exchange strength with him. I didn’t really care if they drained my last drop of blood. They were clearly going to sentence and kill Vito. If they took him, was there any reason I should go on existing? There would be one less vampire in the world feeding off humans, right? The only good I had really done was look out for Mickey’s family. Would he really be grateful for that? I’m sure he would have preferred to do that himself. I thought of him crossing himself and asking forgiveness for me.  
I surrendered myself to whatever deity there was to take me. If not, I surrendered to oblivion.

Well, if you read the prologue, you know my story didn’t end there. I woke with dry, black blood on my lips. I was alone with my Grand-Maker and I realized that the blood was his. He was wearing traditional ancient Egyptian priest garb. There was the jackal-headed mask of Anubis in his arms. I thought I was dead or dreaming for a moment.  
“Where is Vito?”  
“Alive still, child, but he has been sentenced. The jury is still out on your fate. That is why you and I must talk.”  
“He was sentenced while I was unconscious. That hardly seems fair. I thought you wanted me to be a witness at his trial.”  
“We had everything we needed from the interrogation. I know if you were on the stand, you would only beg us to show mercy. You would shed tears and tell us tales about his good character. You would have done him no good or ill. His fate was already decided. The trial was a formality. Many of the Council are still insulted by your very existence. I decided it was best to merely let you recover. We drained you nearly dry. Sunako has never had to deal with child victims. We are fortunate that we didn’t lose you.”  
“Fortunate?”  
He smiled sardonically, “If you believe in that sort of thing.”  
“So how are you going to execute my Maker?”  
“Fire.”  
“When?”  
“Tonight.”  
“Did you get what you needed from him?”  
“Not everything. Vitalo was always one of my more stubborn pupils and fledglings. I will be truly sorry to see him go.”  
“Really?” my voice dripped with cynicism.  
Senenmut’s gaze was sharp for a second, and then his smile broadened, “I was fond of Vitalo until his betrayal. He showed such promise when I found him. From what the blood tells us, though, we are actually doing him a favor. Madness has had him in its jaws for a long time now. You must have seen and experienced for yourself that Vitalo was teetering on the edge of insanity and self-destruction or exposure. If one tries too hard to find and touch the gods, they will only drive them further away. Vitalo was too impetuous. Lilith is a manifestation, not flesh and blood, and she is certainly not for mortals.”  
“She doesn’t even seem to be for most vampires.”  
“You are right. She isn’t.”  
“So why did you spare me?”  
“Making you was not my decision but here you are. Vitalo was one of mine. You were his. There was a blood connection there, even before I revived you with it just now. If I had caught Vitalo earlier, you might have never been made. I never dreamed he would make a vampire. He had shown no interest in the idea before. Our priority was more upon recovering what he had stolen than destroying him. So far from our encounter, I would say that the only thing I would hold against you was your age when you were turned. That is all.”  
“I wish he had told me about you, too. You seem to know a lot about me. Who are you?”  
“I was a priest of Anubis during the eighteenth dynasty of Egypt in the mid 1300’s BC. I was one of the men that prepared the bodies of the dead for burial, so death was part of my everyday life more so than most Egyptians. I was privileged, but I was also cursed. I was born to the priest caste, so I became a scribe and eventually an architect. Since I worked with corpses, though, I was a social pariah. The priests that serve Anubis are well paid and respected, but they are also feared and unloved. The smells of death followed us everywhere.”  
I reeled at what he said and looked at him with new eyes. This vampire was almost three millennia old! He was a true master of dead and ancient religions, languages, and cultures. It was easy to forget that he was going to kill my Maker and had allowed me to be tortured. I was so in awe! This was probably the closest thing to a religious experience I could have, but it was real! In a way, he was practically a god himself. Vito had me thinking that no vampire had ever reached such a stunning age.  
“The eighteenth dynasty? So who was your pharaoh?”  
“Akhenaton was the last pharaoh I served while I was human.”  
“Really?” everything in history had told me he was by far one of the most interesting and controversial pharaohs. “So did you stop being a priest of Anubis? How and when did you become a vampire?”  
“I hoped I could stop mummifying bodies. I hoped for a lot of changes when I left the old capital and followed the young pharaoh to Amarna. The monotheistic approach to religion was revolutionary then, not the norm that is now. It seemed like a good idea. How I was fooled! Akhenaton twisted the faith in the Aten into worship of the pharaoh. I still mummified bodies, only I wasn’t allowed to wear my mask of Anubis and I was overwhelmed with more bodies than I could handle. The location for his capital was terrible and he was a terrible pharaoh himself! Plagues, sandstorms, famine, scorpions, it seemed like all the old gods were unleashing their wrath upon us! I wandered into the desert, disillusioned, and I found a vampire at an oasis. We put our heads together and agreed that we must restore maat. Long story short, history will never know that I aided in the end of the Amarna and Aten experiment. My reward was immortality.”  
“Are you the oldest living vampire?”  
“I doubt it.”  
“You obviously were not the first.”  
“No,” he chuckled. “We called them the hidden ones in my time. They were the reason so many temples needed to have dark and hidden chambers. They drank the blood of animal sacrifices offered to them and fed on sinners we offered to the deserts. They were one of the many secrets that we priests kept. Vampires, creatures like us, have been around since before Egypt was Egypt. I suspect they have been around since the dawn of time. It’s what the teachings of Lilith tell us, anyhow. They certainly must have some grains of truth in them.”  
“Did you have family? Was Tut murdered? Was-“  
“I really don’t have the time or desire to tell you everything about my past, child. I was simply indulging some of your curiosity.”  
I was disappointed but moved my questions into the present, “How many other vampires did you make? Do I have uncles and aunts?”  
“Uncles and aunts? Oh, you are amusing, child! I have made many vampires. Some of them are still with us. I am a Grand-Maker of many. You are my first grandchild, for lack of a better term. You are literally a child. That is the quandary that we have and must address.”  
“What do I have to do?”  
“You will have to renounce Vitalo’s deeds at his execution.”  
“Is his execution really necessary?” it was worth a small attempt.  
His lifeless stare was enough of an answer.  
“What else?”  
“The greatest concern the Council has about you is your ability to survive on your own. You impressed me and the witnesses with your conduct. You didn’t resist me when I found you. There is no evidence that you committed crimes. You endured being drained. I pointed out to the rest of the Elders that you have been a vampire for almost two decades now. Vitalo didn’t neglect teaching you some of the more basic methods of survival. They have to respect my age and the fact that you are of my blood. Therefore, they have allowed a special dispensation. You will be spared until you prove once and for all to them that you can survive entirely on your own without your Maker. You will be monitored closely for a time, but I am confident you won’t do anything to sabotage your chances. Do not prove my faith misplaced.”  
“Am I allowed one more question about your past?”  
“I am going to quote an ancient Egyptian proverb: An answer brings no illumination unless the question has matured to a point where it gives rise to this answer which thus becomes its fruit. Therefore learn how to put a question.”  
“Do you believe in any of your old gods anymore?”  
“Do I believe in Anubis, Isis, Osiris, Horus and Seth? Child, even when I was a priest I knew that they were symbols. Gods are not real. But the Divine is real, and it is no particular god or goddess. It is so much more. Here is another proverb for you: Man, know yourself... and you shalt know the gods.”

My Maker’s execution was set at the midnight hour, because even vampires seemed to have an impulse to follow ritualistic clichés. We all traveled to the chosen site: a conveniently abandoned quarry outside of the city and as far from prying eyes as we could get. My Grand-Maker held my hand, discouraging me from leaving my place.  
A stake had been prepared along with kindling, wood, and gasoline. There was some fragrant sandalwood mixed in with the fire. I wondered how much of that was for religious purpose and how much was for practical purpose. I knew from the experience of burning down our flat that the smell of burning flesh and building materials could be very repellent.  
It was a very cold and windy night with snow flurries falling on the crowd. None of us truly felt the cold, though. The silence was the most disturbing thing. None of my kind has heart beats. We do not even have to breathe, really. The only sound was the wind and leaves and my own blood rushing through the rivers of veins in my body.  
There must have been hundreds of vampires there. The six witnesses were among them, but I didn’t care to make note of anyone else in the crowd. I thought to look for Vladimir and Mishka, but they were not there. At least Vito and I had gained one small victory in all this. We had kept those two safe for now.  
Senenmut was dressed still in his ancient Egyptian linen and masked as Anubis, but he didn’t partake of the rituals and incantations that the other Elders began. There must have been some rule that he was too close to the condemned or maybe he had requested not to himself.  
The Elders spoke in many languages and referenced many deities. I could only catch snippets of what was said and being done. They invoked Osiris and brought out a scale. I recognized the weighing of the heart ceremony even if I didn’t know Egyptian. They invoked Hades, Macha the Death Crone, Hel, the Shinigami, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, Ah Puch, Yama, Yan Luo, and so many others. After what seemed like ages, they finally mentioned Lilith and Cain, the two that were supposed to be our gods. The entire crowd invoked those names. I wondered why vampires had bothered to keep all the old mortal pantheons.  
What a bunch of pompous and pious assholes! I guess I was the only one that remained silent and staring at the stake.  
Once the nonsense was over with, they brought Vito out and chained him to the stake. My Grand-Maker led me to him. He was wearing fresh clothes that were free of bloodstains. He had apparently requested the robes of a Jesuit priest and refused a last meal of blood so he looked ghastly and starved. His red hair was washed and combed once, but it was wild as were his almond eyes. He was so weak and famished his eyes were not taking on the orange glow they usually did in the dark.  
He was praying and that made me want to slap him. What possible comfort could that give him? What good would it do? The Council had invoked nearly every deity and prayer known to man against him and cursed his soul in every language! He was so fervent with his prayers that he also didn’t seem to notice us. I wanted him desperately to see us! These were going to be our last moments together. The gods would have him for the rest of eternity.  
Senenmut squeezed my hand to signal that I must speak the rehearsed words, “This was my Maker.”  
My voice was so small that the crowd struggled to hear even with vampire senses. Vito stopped his prayers and looked at me. Now that I had his attention, I wished I didn’t because I hated what Senenmut wanted me to say. Vito must know why I was about to say them and might know I didn’t mean it, but I didn’t care. I could feel the eyes of the crowd and their disapproval of me. That made it even harder to speak. I wished I had a mask like my Grand-Maker’s.  
“This was my Maker,” I began again and started to go off my script. “But he was more than that. He became my father and my mother. He was my brother. He was my teacher and my best friend. He saved me from mortal death.”  
“Alex?” Senenmut said my name so that only I could hear but it had a dangerous note of warning in it.  
I took a deep breath and said, “I was deceived. Vito-Vitalo was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He is a false prophet. He is a thief. He has broken faith with Lilith and Cain. I want nothing more to do with him. I am his fledgling no longer. I am an orphan. I invoke Lilith and Cain as my parents, for they are the source of immortality and wisdom. “  
I couldn’t look at Vito after saying that. Instead, I glared at Senenmut. He nodded and pointed where I should stand. Every step felt heavy, as though they had tied lead weights to my ankles. I could smell the gasoline as a vampire drenched the wood and my Maker with it so strongly that I almost gagged in front of all these high class vampires. My Grand-Maker accepted a burning brand from another vampire and held it aloft theatrically.  
“This was my fledgling,” Senenmut declared. “But I disowned him long ago! His name is to be stripped from all documents and records whether they are in paper or stone! I unmake him and condemn his soul to Lilith’s final embrace!”  
“Hail Lilith!” droned the crowd.  
“Any last words, Vitalo?”  
“Lilith is alive, you fools!” Vito snarled. “She is not some cold and emotionless deity in the spiritual realm like most of you think. She is not a concept invented to give vampires a sense of spirituality and unity. She is real and alive and she is right here with us! She is here, and you cannot even see her or appreciate her! Not even she is aware of it yet, but maybe this will wake her!”  
Senenmut made no sign that his words meant anything. Maybe there was, but the mask hid it. None of the other vampires cared for them. I felt a stirring of mixed emotions. It didn’t sound terribly different from the crazy things that Vito had been prattling on about for years, but in his last moments, he didn’t seem insane at all.  
With a flick of Senenmut’s wrist, Vito went up in flames within the blink of an eye. The flash of light was so bright and sudden the crowd was forced to shut their eyes. I was grateful that they had used the modern innovation of gasoline to shorten his suffering even a little. No one would choose death by immolation willingly. Dynamite would have been much more merciful.  
Vito screamed. He did not sing or pray like storybook martyrs. His screams lasted only for a minute, as he lost consciousness or was dead. That minute must have been excruciating. I screamed with him.  
Because we shared blood and were vampires, there was an empathic link flickering in me for one last glorious and painful time. My Grand-Maker felt it too. He was a powerful and ancient being, and even he had to lean heavily on his priest staff for that minute. It felt like the blood within us was boiling!  
I felt like my skin must be peeling and roasting, but looking at Senenmut, I saw that it must only be in my head. I realized they had used every tool at their disposal not to show Vito mercy, but to minimize the risk and shared pain of Vito’s blood line. It wasn’t just us. There were dozens in the crowd that writhed. They must have been my so called aunts, uncles, and cousins in the blood. I wondered if the pain had ever driven any of us mad before. No wonder vampires were so reluctant to hunt down and murder their own kind, it affected others!  
However quickly Vito died, his body took much longer to perish. The sandalwood lingered in the air, but the smell of cooking flesh was overwhelming. Flakes of my Maker landed on my nose, skin, and hair. I could tell the difference between the snowflakes and vampire ash because he was still warm when he hit me.  
Part of me wanted to brush him off, another wanted to collect him and keep him in an urn. I had a sneaking suspicion that wasn’t allowed though. Collecting the ashes and keeping them together was asking for a vampire to regenerate. Even if it took centuries, that was theoretically possible. There was a reason total incineration of the body was required as part of the punishment.  
It took over four hours for the body to completely burn. Even then, there were still bones. Most of the vampires had scattered before then, but some of us remained. Sunako, Wanjohi, Yamini, Nathan, Joao, and Kuo stood motionless with blood tears in their eyes or staining their cheeks. I realized they had been some of my relatives all along.  
They stared at the bones for a long while and then began to stomp them and pound them into dust. They dismantled the stake and put away the manacles and chains. Senenmut gave the last ashes to the wind and took off his Anubis mask. There were no blood tears, but he looked haunted.  
“It is done,” he said with finality. “Is everyone alright?”  
“Of course not!” Kuo said. “But that can’t be helped much, can it?”  
“It can. We share blood. Now.”  
We gathered together as Senenmut produced a simple bowl of ceramic. He bit into his wrist. The other six copied him. They each drained some of their blood and let it mix in the bowl. I opened my jaws to bite my own wrist and Senenmut stopped me.  
“Not your blood. We already drained you. We are all giving our blood to you. It will help you survive, grow stronger, need blood a little less.”  
“Is this normal?” I asked with astonishment.  
“No, but you were born with great disadvantages and now you have no Maker. It seems only right.”  
I drank and felt as though my veins were filling and stiffening within me. My senses were sharper than before. I saw brief glimpses of my vampire siblings’ lives and Unlives. They were interesting characters, just as I suspected. I could write whole books about each.  
“I have something for you, Alex,” Sunako motioned to me.  
After our shared pain, I wasn’t nearly as afraid of her as I had been. There were more bloodstains on her cheeks than anyone else. She embraced me and felt warm and oozed compassion, a stark contrast to the sadistic torturer I had seen before.  
She placed a necklace about my throat. Instead of jewelry, there was a vial of red liquid clasped upon it. Instantly I knew that it was a vial of Vito’s blood that she had saved for me. I looked doubtfully at my Grand-Maker. Was this sort of thing allowed? He pretended not to notice and didn’t say a word. He turned away and so did all the others.  
“Wait!” I followed after my Grand-Maker but he was gone the moment I blinked my eyes. I tried to follow Yamini and Nathan. They ditched me too. Joao and Kuo shook their heads at me. Sunako and Wanjohi hesitated. I took a step toward them.  
“You have to prove that you can survive on your own. Remember?” Wanjohi said. “We can’t adopt you.”  
“Vito will still be with you in a fashion,” Sunako smiled. “I half expected Senenmut to smash that thing. He must like you, Alex.”  
They all disappeared, leaving me stranded in the quarry miles from civilization with the snow getting heavier and dawn not too far off. How typical. I clutched the vial of my Maker’s blood.  
It seemed unfitting that nothing should mark his last spot. In a fit of rebellion and maybe a touch of Vito’s madness, I gathered rocks in the quarry to make a cairn. I carved out his name on the rocks too. Let someone else strike out his name! When I began to feel prickly and stinging rays of sunlight, I took shelter in the quarry, spending one last night in Vito’s presence. If he had a soul, maybe it would linger for a little while.  
I didn’t want to leave the spot, even when darkness returned. If anyone was determined to show signs they existed beyond death, it would have been my Maker, but there had been no signs. There were no bumps or creaks in the dark that might have been his ghost. There were no mutterings or whispers. There were no howls or echoes of his death screams.  
It was thirst that finally drove me away. Funny that like mortals, biological urges keep us from wallowing in grief too long. I used the map in the sky to navigate back toward Chicago and back to our house.  
The house had been ransacked. Every book had been torn apart when the Council searched for the hidden artifacts, books, papers, and scrolls. A lot of our furniture was broken, the crockery shattered. They had ripped open some of the walls and torn up and removed floorboards. Most tragic of all was that they had stolen or destroyed all of my Maker’s paintings, drawings, writings, and manifestos. Senenmut had declared all evidence of his existence should be stripped, but it was hard to believe that Keepers of Knowledge would destroy such priceless things no matter what Vito’s crimes had been.  
The next few months were a bit of a frustrating blur. If my test was to see how well I could survive on my own, I technically did it. What the heck the definition of surviving really is, especially to a vampire, no one told me. Besides Herman knocking on the door a few times, I was absolutely alone. I would lie in my bed for days at a time, refusing to answer to anyone or do anything. I took advantage of the fact that I didn’t need to feed as often. There really was no reason for me to do anything and I didn’t want to.  
If I got up, it was to soak in the tub, remembering how Vito had almost drained me to death. I had a dangerous fantasy of finding an inebriated or drugged victim, draining him, and then slashing open my wrists in the tub and allowing myself to fall unconscious under the water. If I didn’t drown first, maybe I’d bleed to death. If I knew my wrists wouldn’t heal before that could happen, I might have tried it. I knew my blood siblings would be very angry if they discovered that I wasted their efforts and allowed their gift down a bathtub drain.  
It was Barbara that got me out of this suicidal rut. There was a knock on the door. Anticipating Herman, I didn’t rouse at first. But the reckless child started throwing rocks at the windows and actually shattered the one nearest me. Even in the most depressed state, anger is a close and easy emotion to feel next. I got up and answered the door to see Mickey’s niece and for once thought of someone besides myself and my own misery. I felt shock and amaze.  
“Barbara, what are you doing here?”  
“I’ve been looking for you, Wendy! I haven’t seen you in ages, and I started asking all around. I asked until someone told me they saw a child that looked like you lurking about in the windows. Where have you been?”  
“My father died.”  
She hugged me and I struggled not to cry and let my blood tears expose me. I told her that I was moving soon. A relative was going to take me away from Chicago. It seemed as though I had to lie to her. It was time. I didn’t plan to really leave or stop keeping track of her, but carrying on a close friendship was going to be impossible soon. I needed to stay around if only to be certain Senenmut and the others wouldn’t hurt her.  
Barbara was upset, of course. I told her we could still be pen pals, a dishonest but easy way to have some sort of a relationship with her until she died because she didn’t have to see me and notice that I never aged or grew up.  
I had to deal with Herman next. I called him on the telephone and invited him to tea. My original intent was only to use him one last time to help me sell the house and get me on the lease of an apartment or rental home. Then I planned to kill him. I was getting close to needing a blood meal.  
When he arrived, he asked, “Were you robbed? The place is an absolute mess! Where’s Vito?”  
“He is at the hospital,” I lied. “But my father needed a favor from you. He has decided to sell this house. We were robbed and we don’t feel safe here anymore. We preferred living in apartments, honestly. I’d like you to help find one in a safer and smaller area of the city. Will you do that for me?”  
“Aren’t you eighteen yet?”  
“Not for a few more months,” I couldn’t fake a smile.  
Herman leaned forward and placed a small notebook on top of the table. I stared at it.  
“What’s this? A listing or something?”  
“I know what you and Vito are,” Herman said in a low voice.  
My spine straightened from my usual lazy slouch and I almost lurched to my feet. I listened intently and strained to feel the presence of other vampires. They really couldn’t watch me without me knowing about them. I had felt their presence a lot, especially at night. They tried to be subtle and random when they spied on me. I heard no mortals either. I knew they must utilize humans in their espionage. I looked hard at Herman.  
“How and when did you find out?” I whispered, still trying to be careful and not naïve.  
“Vito told me himself a long time ago. He used to give me his blood in exchange for my work.”  
“He used to what?”  
“I was a rabbi once, you know. First, you brought me here. I didn’t know you planned for him to kill me then. Vito and I hit it off instead. While you were out hunting, Vito found me nearly dead of alcohol poisoning in the streets. He saved my life, befriended me, read the Torah and taught me so much about it I never knew. He rekindled my relationship with God and gave me a reason to live.”  
“But when did he actually tell you?”  
“After we had become comfortable with each other, he told me what he was. I had begun to have my suspicions anyway, especially whenever I was around you. I never really bought that you were his biological daughter. You never went to school and wandered off alone by yourself too much to be a normal child. You speak and carry yourself like a woman, swinging your hips when you walk.”  
“I do that? Huh. I wasn’t aware.”  
“You do. I caught the weird glowing in your eyes and his whenever you are in the dark. I learned Vito masqueraded more often as a Christian priest than a Jewish rabbi and that wasn’t just an act to get more booze. Lots of little pieces started to come together. I finally asked about whom your mother was and how old you were and that’s when Vito told me.”  
“So why didn’t he kill you or make you one of us?”  
“We have been friends and business partners for too long. He knew he needed me to navigate the mortal world. I told him I didn’t want to become a vampire, and he didn’t seem to want to make me one. I just wanted the blood to get myself off of the booze. He informed me that vampire blood is powerful and isn’t used only to make other vampires. In small drops, it has regenerative and pleasurable qualities. He failed to mention that vampire blood is a thousand times more addictive than booze. It gives humans all the highs of all the drugs with none of the lows! Vito told me that I am what is referred to as a ghoul amongst vampires.”  
“What the hell is that and why did he never tell me about these things?”  
“It means that I am not a vampire, but I must serve one and receive blood in small amounts over time. Traditionally, ghouls were enslaved by vampires only to guard their tombs, coffins, and lairs as they slept out of sunlight. Ghouls are especially useful in the modern age to vampires that want to live amongst humans. Vito told me he didn’t want to make me a slave, but it was our last choice. If I didn’t want to be a vampire, he wasn’t going to force me. He felt guilty enough turning you in the circumstances he did. That meant he had to either kill me or find a failsafe so that I wouldn’t expose you and him. Ghoulification was the only way. He said he has used the unusual technique in the past rather successfully.”  
“So what happens if I don’t give you blood? Can you sense vampires? Do you have some kind of link with Vito? This is a whole new can of worms, Herman, which I didn’t know about!”  
“I won’t die if I am denied vampire blood, but it does cripple us psychologically. Without it, ghouls become mad and our bodies break down because our cells and brain neurons have become dependent on the vampire blood. We overdose on other drugs, attempt to cannibalize people or corpses. I can sense any vampire that has given me blood if they are within a hundred yards of me. If their blood is still in my system, they can call to me. I know, for example, that the vial around your neck has Vito’s blood in it. The vial of blood is what let me know you were hiding in this house alone and you simply wouldn’t come to the door.”  
“How long can you go without blood?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“Vito is dead, Herman.”  
He let out a long sigh. He didn’t celebrate or cry. He tapped the table with his fingers. He was working up his courage to ask me something, I could see it. I knew what it would be.  
“Will you give me your blood?”  
I scoffed, “And make you my pet ghoul? Is that what you really want? Wouldn’t you rather be free?”  
“I don’t think there is a way that a ghoul can be free, Alex! The only way out is death!”  
“Not necessarily. I could make you a vampire,” I clenched my jaw at the thought, naming it only as an option, “or I could kill you and put you out of your misery. What do you want me to do?”  
“I don’t want to be a vampire.”  
“Why not?”  
“I am a Jew. We don’t believe in Satan or Hell, but we do believe in God. I am uncomfortable with the idea of being separated from God as vampires surely must be. At the same time, I’m not quite ready to meet my Maker yet. Vito planned this.”  
“Oh, he planned this, did he? Did he plan to get burned at the stake too? Why did he entrust you with all this information?” I snapped angrily. “Why didn’t he tell me these things? What else was my Maker hiding from me?”  
“He knew it was a matter of time before the Council found him. He knew they might destroy you. In the happy circumstance that they didn’t, he wanted you to have a way to prove you were resourceful. You don’t need him anymore, Alex, but you are a child vampire. You can survive amongst vampires, but if you want to be an agent in the mortal world, which all vampires are forced to do sometimes, you will need a ghoul. You need me or someone like me. Isn’t that why you called me here? You wanted to sell the house and find an apartment. You know you can’t do that on your own. You physically can, but no human is going to let you function like an adult. You will always be treated like a child. You can use me or discard me. Find another mortal that you can either trust or manipulate or both. Use them. It’s what will win you your independence.”  
I didn’t like this ghoul business, but I knew he was right. I pivoted my weight in my chair and rolled my eyes.  
“Could you find a knife or something?”  
“I have a syringe!”  
“Yeah, that’s probably best.”  
He tossed me the tool and I plunged it into a vein and extracted as much as the needle would allow. I tossed it back to Herman. He injected it directly into his arm eagerly and let out an audible sigh of massive relief. I pointed to the little elephant on the table.  
“You didn’t say what this is.”  
“That book was written by Vito. They are notes he saved for you. They explain more. I promised him I wouldn’t read it. He instructed that it was for your eyes only and I should give it to you and tell you about me if anything happened to him. I’m being a good ghoul.”  
“These are Vito’s words?”  
My hands trembled as I snatched it. I stroked my hand with reverence over the cover and hugged it to my chest.  
“You want this place sold,” Herman rose from the table. “What about the apartment?”  
“Just find something comfortable and as inconspicuous as possible. Thank you, Herman. I’m very glad neither Vito nor I killed you.”  
“Not as glad as I am.”  
With him gone, I began to devour Vito’s writings, the only writings of his in existence. Even though he had almost always written in French or Italian, he used English for my sake, knowing it was my first language. He had used his favorite fountain pen and filled every page. That wasn’t hard to do since the pages were tiny. The thing was the size of a pocket bible.  
Since Vito had played a priest so often, he had perpetually smelled of incense and sandalwood and that was what the pages smelled like. I clutched the vial as I read and saw his face in my mind’s eye and heard his voice in my ears.  
Alex,  
I am gone. It must be so, but I’m glad, because if you are reading this, my Maker and the Council have spared you. I hope you decide to use Herman. He has served us well so far. I entrusted him with my business and all the bank accounts, deeds and titles of anything and everything we owned. Because he had them in his name, the Council could not steal your inheritance. I didn’t want to leave you entirely out in the wind. I took great pains to make sure they wouldn’t think to notice him or track down Vladimir and Mishka.  
You are probably feeling very lost, angry, and miserable. Remember that in suffering, there is wisdom. One thing I have always disagreed with about Buddhism is that they wish to escape the cycle of suffering. If we do not suffer, we do not learn and we do not appreciate joy. We probably would not care for other souls either. Their Middle Way sounds so terribly boring! I like to think that I am in some sort of heaven but free to return to the mortal realm either at spiritual will or in another form. It’s not a bad thought.  
If you needed to know one thing, Alex, it is that I lied even to you and the Council about the real reason why I made you. It wasn’t just because I was lonely and wanted a daughter. I saw you, Alex, in that hospital and I truly saw YOU. Lilith. It is my absolute belief that you are Lilith incarnated. I knew that if I made you a vampire, you would be a pure vampire with a pure soul and the pure heart of a child. I wanted you to become self-aware on your own, which is why I tried not to delve too deeply into the mythos of Lilith and Cain. I wanted to save you from biases so I encouraged you to study human myths instead. I wanted you to teach me as no dead or living culture or literature could. I did learn so much from you in the short time that we were together and enjoyed your company so much. I am so grateful.  
I will not pretend to know why Lilith had to be incarnated. There must be some purpose. I was always merely a servant and priest of Lilith and Cain. I never imagined I would meet her in the flesh. When the Council comes for me, they can destroy me, but I saw the face of my goddess. The rest of this book is to help you learn about yourself and embrace who you are. Let the blood of vampires sing to you and let the heart beats of mortals guide you, Lilith. I will be somewhere, I’m sure, rooting for you.  
Your Maker and your Child, Vito  
I had to stop for a minute after I read that. I had obviously misjudged how insane Vito had been. He thought I was some sort of vampire goddess? That was why he had made me? He allowed himself to be tortured and burned when he could have simply told the Council this silly theory and revealed where those last items were that they wanted? He wanted to go out some sort of misguided martyr?  
I knew what I was: A simpering child vampire that knew absolutely nothing about the world and the farthest thing from a deity anyone could get! Did he expect when he went up into flames that I would have some sort of religious eureka moment and snap open my eyes and start performing miracles? He expected me to have some kind of awakening and force a reckoning upon vampires and humans?  
Well, nothing had happened. Absolutely nothing had happened except that he had been burned, stomped to ashes, and scattered. I could do nothing about it. There was no divine intervention or enlightenment for any creature. Vito was lost. That was the only thing that had been accomplished.  
The next page was the basic myth of Lilith and Cain that I had never really paid attention to or been told, the vampire equivalent of the Ten Commandments, and tons of rules that the Council had painstakingly etched out to supplement them. The rest of the book was filled with rituals, prayers, meditations and commentaries by my Maker but mostly other vampire scholars and priests. I suppose, besides Vito’s personal note at the beginning, it really was a sort of vampire bible. I read the first myth and the commandments.  
In the beginning, the Creator made the world and begot Life. He created Plants, Animals, and Man. Man was to be bequeathed with the greatest gifts in the universe: Knowledge and Immortality. He made Lilith separate so that she would be what Mankind should aspire to be, for she possessed both these gifts. She was given the task of guarding the Tree of Knowledge and the fruits of Immortality. She kept the animals in check, as the Creator made her to be the apex predator. In those early days, she drank the blood of animals to prevent them from overwhelming the Plants.  
Man’s earliest and greatest sin to this day is that they took from the Tree of Knowledge before they were ready. Despite the Creator’s command and Lilith’s warnings, they stole Knowledge. As punishment, they were denied the great gift of Immortality and expelled from the primordial Garden of Eden. The Creator unleashed Lilith upon them, and at his command, she began to drink human blood. At times, she showed mercy because she loved Mankind still. Adam had been given Eve, but Lilith had no mate and humans were her closest kin. She continued to guide them even as she culled their numbers. It was Man that needed to be checked, not the Animals.  
Then Cain appeared, the first murderer. Cain and Abel would make sacrifices to the Creator. Contrary to human accounts, it was Cain that was the hunter and Abel was the farmer. It was Cain’s animal sacrifices with the scent of blood that most pleased Lilith and the Creator, not Abel’s offerings of bloodless fruits. It was Abel that attacked his brother in a fit of jealousy, but it was Cain that struck him down and killed him. He thought his brother meant to kill him and knew only after Abel died that he had been wrong. Realizing his sin, he tried to cover up the murder and lied when confronted. He feared that he would be killed too. Both the Creator and the humans demanded his blood. Lilith knew all that had happened because she had become enamored of the brothers and Abel’s blood called out to her.  
It was Lilith that swayed the Creator and stayed his hand from striking down Cain. She took pity on Cain that had been born out of both Wisdom and Love. The Creator decided that Cain should be marked and protected. He gave Cain to Lilith as mate, knowing that she was lonely. Lilith made him a blood-drinker because it was she that carried the fruit of Immortality in her veins. He became her Lover, Brother, and Son and they made more like to themselves through the Blood. They and their Children dwelt in Harmony amongst Mankind, teaching and guiding as Lilith had done.  
But Mankind soon began to go astray. They sought too much Knowledge too soon and attempted to steal Immortality from the Children of Lilith and Cain. Cain and the Children began to twist the teachings of Lilith and gave into their bloodlust. They began to distrust and even hate Mankind. Both Mankind and the Children began to use Knowledge without the temperance of Wisdom. Lilith was betrayed and heartbroken, forced to turn on her wicked Children and to subdue Cain. Though Mankind once again cried out for his blood, Lilith could not bring herself to destroy her mate and Mankind’s love for her soured. They began to spurn the gift of Knowledge and demanded only the gift of Immortality.  
In the end, Lilith and the Children of the Blood were forced into Shadow. Lilith herself withdrew back to the Garden with Cain so that she could nurse and tame him. She grew more selective with her gifts. But one day Lilith and Cain will be reconciled. Whenever Man grows too arrogant and threatens to destroy the world with misused and stolen Knowledge, Cain will lash out to prevent it and rebuke them. In turn, Lilith will act for the Creator and stop Cain from destroying Man and the world.  
The two of them, Lilith and Cain, must always remain to tend and cull the Garden of the Creator. Their Children must continue to consume the blood of Man and commune with their parents so that Knowledge and Wisdom through the blood will always be preserved.  
The Commandments:  
1\. The names and images of the Creator, though powerful, ultimately do not matter. Enlightenment, Wisdom, and Knowledge in pursuit of the higher plane does.  
2\. Do not deny thyself pleasure and do not always seek to avoid pain. Both are required for Knowledge, Wisdom, and growth within the Garden and within Heaven.  
3\. Seek always to balance Wisdom with Knowledge because they are not the same. Do not steal it or use it with malice.  
4\. No Child of Lilith should slay a fellow Child of Blood or their own life may be forfeit.  
5\. The Children have a duty to guide and cull the flock that is Mankind using Wisdom to temper the bloodlust.  
6\. Children must multiply with Wisdom in mind, not loneliness.  
7\. The Children are students and teachers of Knowledge, not gods or leaders of Men. Remember this or Mankind will suffer and the Creator chagrined.  
8\. The Children of Blood must remain separate and hidden from Mankind.  
9\. The Children of Blood must gather frequently en mass to share blood, both human and vampire, with one another to share Knowledge.  
10\. Do not be willfully ignorant and never stop pursuing Knowledge and Wisdom. Remember to do this always in the spirit of Love, Compassion, and Understanding.  
I put the book down and couldn’t read any further for a while. It seemed that Vito had broken at least two of these great commandments. He had stolen knowledge and he had confessed that he had made me out of loneliness. He had threatened to break at least a third one by littering the human world with artifacts, both real and faked, of and about Lilith. I had a little more understanding than before, but I was disappointed and, at that time, disenchanted.  
Herman came to collect me a few days later. The house was on the market and he had found an apartment for us. He led me by the hand, playing the part of my human father. Unlike Vito, he actually was human so our story seemed more credible. He helped me to become conscious of and correct my walk. I never resorted to talking in baby-talk, but I tried to adjust my vernacular to that of an everyday child.  
He got me identification papers and cards that he kept regularly updated as the years and decades would inevitably go by. He got me a social security number. All that he ever asked for in return was a few drops of blood every few days and some conversation.  
Vladimir and Mishka came to visit me in my apartment at last. It had been over a year since they had told me they were coming. I didn’t expect them to ever appear to me again. It was probably too dangerous. Imagine my surprise when I awoke to find them standing over me!  
“Oh, little one!” Mishka threw her arms around me and gave me a great big hug that I soaked up like a sponge. “We are so sorry!”  
“My friends!”  
Vladimir put his arms around the two of us, joining in on the hug. The three of us began to keen our grief for Vito. It was a glorious cry session. Vladimir didn’t shy away from showing his emotion. How hard that must have been for a man and a Rooskie at that! It was nice to have company in my misery.  
“We were on our way,” Vladimir explained once we all regained some of our composure. “But we sensed Council members. They were in the city of Chicago and all of the surrounding areas! We couldn’t-“  
“I understand. There was nothing that you or Mishka could have done. Vito wanted you two spared.”  
“He was still dear to us!” Mishka declared. “We knew him for over two centuries! We only wanted you to know that if we thought we could have done something, we would have!”  
“And did you believe all the crazy things that he did?” I asked.  
“He could be convincing about some of it,” the couple were becoming very reticent.  
“The Council still wants those artifacts. The old business that you were working on for my Maker and took from him in that case while we visited you in Russia: Was that real or fake?”  
Vladimir glared as he said, “We translated, sold, or traded almost everything that your Maker gave us already. They are out of our hands forever and our personal beliefs are our own.”  
“I suppose that’s fair. I’m just so glad to see you! Are you sure it’s safe for you to be here?”  
“Yes. You aren’t under observation anymore.”  
“Is that so? No one told me that!”  
“Of course they wouldn’t tell you that! They want you to behave!”  
I breathed a sigh of relief.  
“We met your ghoul on the way in.”  
“Herman?”  
“Well, we brushed by him. Do you give him enough blood to stay loyal in the face of danger, mortal and immortal?”  
“I give him plenty of blood. That and a lot of kosher bologna sandwiches,” I grinned. “Are you two going to stay with me? I would like that.”  
“We have been hearing disturbing things about what’s going on in Europe and our motherland. We had to see you before we left America. We brought you one of the real artifacts that Vito gave us. Send it to the Council. We acquired it back for you so that you could win some more trust from them. It is better to be in their graces than out of them. We act against them when they demand it of us, but we know better than to openly defy them. Vito was much braver than we were.”  
I accepted a carved statuette of Lilith that they had placed in a protective box. It looked Sumerian. I took it gratefully and was very sad that the vampire couple couldn’t stay with me.  
“Am I allowed to keep writing to you?”  
“Of course. We’ll send you the first letter. You know us. We are nomadic vampires and never really have a permanent address.”  
“Please visit me once in a while. If I learn Russian, will you?”  
“We might try.”  
They gave me another hug and left me alone again. At least I had Herman. Of course Herman was no vampire and couldn’t replace Vito in my heart. No, I knew that hole could never be filled.  
I sent the artifact to Senenmut. He had given me a place to send such things to him. I didn’t hear or see him or any other Council vampire for years and that was just fine with me. I didn’t really feel like seeing them at the time. International issues were beginning to affect all countries and vampires as well as humans.  
I dreamed about my Maker from time to time. I don’t know if that was because of the blood I kept around my neck at nearly all times or if it was just my mind inventing fantasies to ease the pain. Mortals dream about their dead loved ones all the time. If they were supposed to be pleasant fantasies, though, they failed. Vito would show up in my room. I’d burst with joy and spring out to catch myself around his neck and call him father because I knew he hated it and secretly loved it.  
As soon as I touched him, he would turn to ash. Sometimes I would ‘wake’ in my dream and start scolding him for leaving me and trying to trick me into thinking he had somehow regenerated or come back from the dead a second time. His intrusion into my dreams was more of a torment and annoyance than a comfort. Where was the guidance I needed, the words of love, the assurances that he existed somewhere?  
After a few years, he stopped appearing in my dreams for a long spell. I was worried. I missed him. I did something very stupid. I opened the vial around my neck and I took a tiny sip of his blood. I had a theory that I needed to test. I hoped that if I ingested his blood, I would see him again and he could communicate still in his preserved blood. I was not surprised but terribly disappointed that nothing happened. Nothing. I was alone in my room, and that loneliness was the most awful thing that I had ever experienced.  
I was tempted to chug the rest of his blood down. Maybe I just needed more blood. I stopped myself because I knew if I drank it, there would be nothing of my Maker left. Sunako had no spare vials. I needed to treasure every drop because they were precious.  
The 1940’s and World War II broke out. Vladimir and Mishka wrote me frantic letters about some of the horrible things that were going on. They had witnessed some of the atrocities of the Einsatzgruppen that Nazi Germany sent out into Eastern Europe and Russia. They reported that Poland had become a factory of death. That upset me because Vito and I had spent some time amongst the Polish Jews there. They were trapped and cut off from all communication during the Siege of Leningrad (to Vladimir’s utter annoyance, they had renamed St. Petersburg yet again) and were forced to watch over a million of their people starve.  
They begged the Council to intervene in the war. They had tried during the last Great War to intervene in Russia. For once, the Council decided to stay out of it just like America did for the longest time. Perhaps they had learned from their mistakes.  
When America did enter the war, I surged with pride. Chicago surged with national pride and even better, it swelled with factories and jobs. The Great Depression had already been winding down, but now, it was gone. While America provided things like tanks, troops, and atom bombs, it was the overwhelming blood of Russians that also defeated the axis powers. Vladimir and Mishka never failed to remind me of that. It was America and Russia that would become the international super stars of the next few chapters of history.  
After the war, I received a visitor. It was Senenmut, my Grand-Maker. I was nervous, but the ancient, god-like vampire smiled reassuringly at me.  
“Alex, it is good to see you. Will you please sit with me? There is something that I need to ask of you.”  
“You need a favor from me? What could I possibly do for you?” I said in awe.  
“Sit.”  
I sat.  
“Alex, it has occurred to me and the rest of the Council that America has been grossly neglected. We have few members here and that needs to be changed as soon as possible. Every great city should have a guardian. Chicago is no exception. You are a baby vampire in many ways, but it seems, that you are actually one of the oldest living vampires in Chicago. Any other vampire has merely passed through this place on their way somewhere else. Others are older, but they do not know the city as you do. You have lived in this city for nearly thirty years. You must really love it here.”  
“I do love it.”  
“Most vampires never settle in a place, you know that, don’t you? Only about three in ten of us ever see an entire century go by. Less than one out of ten is fortunate to count millennia. Vampires like me, well, there are only a dozen or so like me in the world. If there are more, they prefer to stay in hiding. Some of them may be in deep hibernation. It is probably better for everyone that way.”  
“I’m sorry, Grand-Maker, but what is it that you came here to ask me? Do you want me to become Guardian of Chicago?”  
He pressed his palms and fingers together as he stared. I swallowed hard. Then I laughed nervously.  
“God, and here I thought I was in trouble! I guess I accept if there is no one you can think of better for such a job?”  
“Alex, you have proven worthy of my faith so far. You have kept yourself alive, you have not exposed the race, you have adapted with very little guidance. You even found and returned one of the relics that your Maker stole after we were no longer monitoring you. It would have been absolutely a deadly mistake if you hadn’t, but you must have known that. You are also of my blood. For a child vampire, are you aware that you have one of the oldest and most powerful strains flowing in your veins? Have you noticed that you are looking less and less human? Most vampires your age look no different from humans until they are at least a hundred.”  
“I have noticed,” I said grudgingly. “My strength is increasing in leaps and bounds. My skin is becoming too white. I have to paint my face and nails to look human. I have to wear sunglasses at night, not because the moonlight is too much. I do it because my eyes glow too much. I have fake papers saying I am legally blind. I might have to start saying I’m albino.”  
“Very good.”  
“So, what exactly does a Guardian do?”  
“You keep your city free of rogue vampires. They answer to you in all things. You become a representative of the Council and act on our behalf. You monitor the humans, report at least once a year, and you must become a priestess of Lilith and Cain.”  
“Even if it’s just lip service?”  
“Yes.”  
“Will I have to destroy anyone?”  
“If a vampire threatens to expose the race, it must be done without question. If the vampire is suspect of a crime, you report them to me. If you have proof, the Council comes in to handle it.”  
“Well, I guess I already look after the humans. I accept the job in the name of Lilith.”  
“By the way, Alex, in about twenty years, you will be eligible to make a vampire of your own. Is that something that interests you?”  
“No.”  
“Really?”  
“Look at me, Senenmut. Who on earth would want to be my companion?”  
“I had the same thoughts when I was a mortal that smelled constantly of corpses. I found myself a bride. She never had a strong sense of smell.”  
“You were not a vampire permanently stuck in the body of a child.”  
“It is true that I would never approve of you making another child vampire, but you could choose a teenager or an adult.”  
I shuddered, “Wouldn’t that be bordering pedophilia or something?”  
My Grand-Maker sliced the air with one of his palms, “As long as the relationship was consensual, Alex, there would be no judgment from me! I know that you are no child. If you can convince a person of that and they knew not to expect it, that is no one’s business but your own.”  
“No,” I insisted. “I don’t think I can make another.”  
“You may change your mind at any time. Just remember the commandment not to let loneliness drive you to choose someone unworthy or unfit. There is no pressing need to make new vampires. In fact, there has been a plague of unruly and idiotic newborns all over the world. We can’t possibly track down every one. They are made faster than we can find them and destroy them. Be prepared to defend your territory, Alex. Some of these newborns just need guidance and a good scare, but some might require annihilation.”  
“What if someone comes along that is more powerful than me?”  
“Send for me. I will expect you at the next Festival of Lilith and Cain.”  
He vanished and I cracked open Vito’s Bible of Lilith and Cain. I began to practice and absorb everything I read. I made a shrine and meditated every day. It felt silly at first, but as it became habitual, it became strangely comforting. Make no mistake, I hadn’t converted. I communed more with the spirit of my Maker Vito than with any sort of spirit of Lilith and Cain. I made offerings of my blood when I attended the annual Festival. By the time the 50’s rolled around, I was ordained an official Priestess of Lilith and Cain by my Grand-Maker.  
I began to revel in my role as Guardian of Chicago. I made a point to learn everything I could about my personal kingdom. Herman helped me build a model of the city in my apartment. I listened in on the police frequencies with my radio and kept the local news on constantly on my television set. I sought out every vampire in the city whether they were just visiting or squatting. It was good fortune that most of the vampires were newborns, just as Senenmut had said.  
They were clueless hippies wandering lost and confused during the 60’s and 70’s, grungy punks in the 80’s and 90’s and new age gothic vampires beyond. They were easily chased away or tamed. They laughed at me when they first saw me, but I set them straight as soon as I ripped open a car like a tin can or leveled their pathetic hideouts. It was me laughing at them with their strange notions of what vampires should be. The gothic vampires especially were so cute! They liked to wear black and sleep in coffins. I had never slept in a coffin my entire existence! That always surprised them.  
I found no companions among these types. They were too pathetic even to me. I gave them advice and sent them on their way. I didn’t demand tribute and I didn’t want their friendship. Older vampires had no interest in me either. They sought me out to let me know they were there and told me precisely how long they wanted to stay. It was never for much longer than a year or two.  
There was very little danger in what I did. Most of my reports to Senenmut were boring and uneventful. Leaving Russia was becoming harder and harder for Vladimir and Mishka to do, but we still kept in touch with each other through coded letters. Even though I had added more languages to my growing list of tongues, including Russian, French, and German, code had to do with Russia under Soviet rule.  
It was during the 90’s that I lost Herman. My ghoul had lived a long time thanks to heavy doses of my blood as he got on in age. I knew I would have to lose him. He was human and never asked to become a vampire. This didn’t make his death any easier. I would have kept him alive longer if he hadn’t died on me while I slept. Losing him was like losing a favorite, childhood pet. Now I needed to find a replacement ghoul. This business was almost as serious as trying to find a vampire companion. I needed my ghouls as much as they would need me!  
I prowled around hospitals and rehab clinics in preparation. I kept Herman in relative ease and comfort in hospice while I searched. I needed someone with an addictive personality. I found meals in these places, but no one that I seemed to click with until a year after Herman died. I was getting desperate. It was only a matter of time before someone came around demanding to know whose name the bills were in and where they were.  
That was when I met Gus at last. I had been stalking him as a potential ghoul. He was eighteen, but he looked far older than his years. He was a meth addict and had been arrested and thrown out of rehab for the fifth time. His family had disowned him, his landlord had thrown him in the streets, and he had no money for the fix he desperately needed. I offered him a new drug and he was hooked on my blood. He didn’t realize what I was giving him and didn’t care for a while. When he got tired of sleeping under train tracks, I offered him a spare room in my father’s apartment.  
After a few months of living with me, he began to realize I had no parent. I was far too generous with money. I left him a twenty dollar bill whenever I went to hunt or patrol and kept a fridge full of food that I never touched. He began to question his sanity. I couldn’t help but find it all incredibly amusing.  
“Where are your parents?” he asked.  
“Well, it took you long enough to ask!” I laughed as I extracted blood from a vein in front of his eyes. “You are my parent now.”  
He handled the whole vampire and ghoul thing very well. Oh, our relationship had begun with manipulation, but over the decades, he proved just as valuable to me as Herman did. He loved horror movies and jazz. I have a terrible weakness for jazz and blue grass to this day. He became like a kid brother to me over time. We began to banter like immature children but he saved my life.  
I was out hunting and patrolling the Chicago streets when I came across some hoodlum children vandalizing and exploring a condemned building. Fearing for their safety, I threatened the kids and tried to chase them off. One of the little brats decided to throw bricks at me and I lost my temper. I’m terrible with my temper even after all these years. I leveled part of the wall as I swung my arms.  
I succeeded in scaring the child, but I wasn’t prepared for part of the roof to crash down on me. I am far stronger than even another vampire would guess, but the rubble piled over me weighed tons. It was just a little too much for me. I had miscalculated and was about to pay dearly. Dawn was perilously close and it promised to be a scorching and bright day. It was midsummer and I was helpless.  
I had a cell phone in my pocket. I am not one of those anti-technology vampires. The problem was that the phone had been crushed along with my legs. If I had been able to use my phone, I couldn’t call the police or an ambulance. If the responders found me, they’d have to take my vitals and rush me to a hospital. If they saw that I had no heartbeat or blood pressure to take, they’d panic and break every rib in my body to try to jump start a dead and useless heart. No thank you, I didn’t want that sort of treatment or exposure. I used my blood to cry out to Gus, my ghoul.  
Exposure to sunlight causes eerily similar symptoms to radiation poisoning in my kind. Within minutes of sun exposure, I could sense my skin breaking out into rashes. As time passed, I began to feel severe abdominal pains. I was crying out by the time Gus found me. His strength combined with mine was just enough to move the rubble so that I could crawl to freedom. He covered me with a tarp from his trunk and drove me home.  
I kept track of my human family too, of course. That was practically my duty with my role as Guardian of Chicago. Barbara married and had children. They led a charmed life. If they ever had financial problems, one of her children would find a cache of money hidden in their house. If there was a bully at school, a red-headed girl would appear to champion them. In 2008, her grand-daughter was pregnant too young and wandering the streets. Gus and I frantically tracked her movements. When she started going into labor, I smacked him in the back of the head.  
“Get her to a hospital right now, Gus! She’s having the baby! Don’t let that little boy be born on a dirty street!”  
“No, duh, your majesty!” he said sarcastically but ran to obey anyway.  
Gus drove her to the hospital. I couldn’t possibly go with them. I couldn’t risk one of the family recognizing me again. That is when Mike was born. He was a beautiful blue eyed and blonde haired boy that was eight pounds and three ounces. His mother sent Gus a picture over the internet as thanks for being a Good Samaritan. I burst into tears at the sight. They had even named him Mike, so close to Mickey that it seemed to be more than coincidence! I grew more attached to him than anyone else in the family and was able to track him even easier with social media. I became quite tech savvy very quickly.  
Nearly ten years went by and then I received a message while in a restaurant with Gus. It was another vampire’s ghoul. An old vampire wanted to visit with me in Chicago from Germany, someone named Stefan. He was as cautious about me as I was about him. That was when everything changed. 

I followed Stefan’s ghoul into the conference room with its stale air, ugly office seats, and garish plastic-covered table. There was a bowl of complimentary mints in the center of it. As I waited for the vampire to appear, I snatched a mint, unwrapped it from its paper and stuffed it in my mouth solely so that I could spit it in the air and catch it again in my mouth. I couldn’t taste the cold, spicy sensation of the mint, I was just bored and a little jittery. I almost swallowed it when a child entered the room.  
The boy looked like he was no more than twelve years old. He had auburn hair and blue eyes. He was incredibly small, even shorter than I was. He sat across from me and gave me a wide smile. I was confused and a bit embarrassed. I spit out the mint back into its wrapper. I had felt the presence of a vampire, and one that must be old, but I hadn’t expected this. None of his ghouls had ever mentioned his true age or what he looked like. The boy said nothing as he waited patiently for me to speak.  
I cleared my throat, “Stefan?”  
“That is my name.”  
I still had the half-dissolved mint balled up in my hand. I stared, unsure what to do with it and unsure what to make of him. Now I understood why he had been extra careful scouting me out and why he utilized so many ghouls. I thought I had heard a trace German accent in his voice.  
“Would you prefer if I spoke in German?” I asked both to be polite and to impress him. “I’m not as fluent as I would like to be, but Lilith teaches us to pursue knowledge and put it into practice when appropriate.”  
“No, that isn’t necessary. Thank you for asking.”  
Now that I had displayed more mature behavior and my nerves were somewhat settling, I rose and threw away the trash in the wastepaper basket in the corner of the room. I returned to my seat, crossing my legs.  
“Honestly, I wasn’t expecting someone like me.”  
“Like you?”  
“Don’t be a dick!” I snapped. “You are a child vampire like me. You know that’s what I meant.”  
Stefan laughed at the crude language instead of taking offense. That was a relief. Me and my big mouth. I needed to get used to what a strange creature he was. He was an old soul trapped in a little boy’s body, but his laugh was more high-pitched than mine was. He made me realize suddenly how odd and unnatural I must seem to others. I was used to the priceless looks of shock I got. I wondered what he could register from my face right now.  
“What did you expect from me, might I ask?”  
“Someone more like my former Maker, I suppose,” I answered. “After all, you and I shouldn’t exist.”  
“Well, we do. There’s not just you and I, Alex. I brought my followers and friends with me into the city. They are all of them child vampires like us.”  
“All of them? And how many is all?”  
“Several dozen.”  
I was alarmed that he had brought so many vampires to my city, “And did you ask permission to bring them here? I knew you were coming, but I didn’t expect anyone else with you.”  
“The Council told me that it would be your decision whether or not they are allowed to stay. I will send them back to Germany in a heartbeat if you ask. I promise you that they will do as I say and we will hunt only in the places that you allow.”  
“You seem very reasonable, Stefan. Still, that’s a significant amount of vampires in such a short time even for a place as big as Chicago. Until I meet them, I prefer them to find places out in the surrounding suburbs and towns in separate splinter groups. How much feeding do they require?”  
“I have several young fledglings so that varies month to month.”  
I frowned at him, “Then keep those young ones with you! I don’t want any trouble in my city! Is that perfectly clear?”  
“Crystal clear.”  
Stefan bowed his head in a gesture of respect. I bit my lip. I still planned to complain to the Council about this. It felt like I was being tested by them and by Stefan. I had been designated the Guardian of Chicago long enough to take the role very seriously and had proven worthy of it so far. Having an entire coven of vampires invading it was a far cry from chasing off a troublesome lot of newborns though.  
“How long do you intend to stay here?” I asked. “Explain yourself!”  
“Well, first, I would like you to go out and feed with me.”  
My eyes glazed so that I wouldn’t give away my thoughts. At least I hoped that trick would work. I didn’t need to feed right now, and Stefan didn’t look that famished for a vampire. Watching our kind hunt and kill is always a personal thing in our culture, if you could say we had one. It was far more intimate than asking someone to dinner. Each vampire’s method was unique to them. I could learn a great deal from watching him and vice-versa. It had been a long time since I had such company. Not even Vladimir and Mishka hunted with me. That was something that only Vito and I had done together.  
I hesitated, but I found myself saying, “Alright. Let’s hunt.”  
The two of us left the conference room and then the building out into the darkness. Chicago streets are never really dark though. We could summon our ghouls if we needed them. We walked side-by-side. Strangers must have thought we were a pair of siblings returning home from an after-school activity or from grabbing a burger from a fast-food chain. Stefan pivoted in whatever direction I went. I knew where the cameras and police would be. No matter how old this vampire boy was, I knew this territory better than any vampire or mortal historian. Luckily, he didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and he was pleasantly patient.  
I led him to one of the heroin houses. Homeless men and women, dropouts, and other forgotten souls gathered in this place to get high. I stopped near the door and crossed my arms. Stefan was my guest. I was going to let him feed first. He seemed to take my hint and flashed his fangs. He searched for a victim. I watched his every move and flicker of expression within his face.  
He sought out some teenagers, stoned out of their gourds, which were huddled together in a room in the far back of the house. Most of the people in the house were so high or apathetic that they didn’t notice two children walking through the hall. Only one person acknowledged us at all and pointed at us, ready to say something. It was an unfortunate action on his part.  
Stefan latched onto him with a speed and ferociousness that surprised me. He drained the man lightning fast and let him drop. He sliced open his finger with his own fang, swept the bloodied finger over the puncture wounds on the man’s neck so they would be healed pre-mortem, then snapped the man’s neck with a sickening sound. His blue eyes became almost a pale white in the dark and now they were clouded from the high his victim had transferred to him.  
“Your turn, Alex,” he said, licking his lips in case there was any trace of blood. He was being overly cautious. He had been efficient. He was flushed and rosy, his hair shimmered, and he appeared more alive.  
I listened for the weakest heartbeat. I followed it toward a dirty bathroom that reeked of all of the worst body fluids. We slipped inside and Stefan closed and locked the door behind us. It was so cramped that the toilet almost touched the stained tub and a tiny bath mat nearly covered half the floor. A single teenage girl sat in the tub, covered in bruises. Getting high was clearly not her goal. She was trying to stick herself with more heroin and missing her veins. Her eyes were red but droopy. I reached out and took her hand.  
“What’s your name?” I asked.  
“Christie.”  
“You should go home, Christie.”  
Stefan knitted his eyebrows. The girl shook her head.  
“Go home? I live in a foster home! It’s trash! I am trash! Everything is trash! Don’t you get it?”  
“How old are you, Christie?”  
“What do you care? How did you even get in here, kid? Are you looking for your mom and dad or something? Are you a foster kid too?”  
“You don’t want to die.”  
“Watch me!”  
She ruptured a vein with her next attempt. Clearly this girl was determined. She was going to die with me or without me. Her heartbeat gave her away. I took the needle for her. She reached for it, probably terrified I was going to smash it.  
“Say a prayer,” I told her. “I am going to help you.”  
“Help me?” she was so confused.  
“Yes. Are you Catholic, by chance?”  
“No. I don’t know what I am.”  
“Well, I will pray for you if you want me to. I can pray to any deity you want. Or you can say something. It doesn’t matter. I’ll make it dignified. Suicide by heroin is one of the more pleasant methods, but you won’t be a dignified sight for those that find you. Not unless I am here.”  
“Why would you help me?”  
“Call me an angel of death.”  
Stefan snorted under his breath. I almost elbowed him. This was not a joke to me or to Christie. She looked so grateful. I found a proper vein in one side of her neck and gave her a last giant dose of her poison of choice. As I injected, I bit into the artery on the other side of her neck. Her blood broadcasted a life of disappointment, pain, and no hope for a future. A heart attack seized through her body and rushed blood to my mouth that much easier. I barely had time to erase my fang marks.  
Of course, now I was high as a kite. Stefan had to lead me back outside.  
“Why did you bother with all that song and dance before you killed her? Did you want her to live and get away?”  
“I just wanted to give her a choice of some kind. A chance. It’s how my Maker Vito would treat his victims if he had the time to give them. I prefer to do it that way too,” I said with a little pride.  
“I see. For a minute, I thought you were just toying with her.”  
I had to pause, nearly stumbling all over the place like a zombie instead of a vampire. Stefan was more sober. He steadied me. Silently, I summoned Gus. I needed the company of someone other than Stefan, just to be safe. It’s so unfortunate that hunting in the modern age has become so risky that addicts and homeless people are practically our only safe source of blood. Sometimes I wonder how much longer vampires can keep to the shadows.  
“Do you want to have some fun, Alex?” Stefan asked.  
“Why not? What do you have in mind?”  
I was feeling good, and Gus would follow at just the right distance. I followed Stefan to a children’s simple playground. We swung on swings, chased each other through obstacles of recycled tires. We dangled on the monkey bars and shoved each other down the slide. I am nearly a hundred and Stefan gave me the impression that he must be older, but we were high and trapped in child bodies. No one else would have possibly considered doing this sort of thing with me.  
We howled at the moon like wolves and the street echoed with the laughter of children’s voices that were not from the voice boxes of children. Stefan began reciting German nursery rhymes. I sang London Bridges and Ring around the Rosy at the top of my lungs. Gus must have thought we were going crazy!  
All of the noise we were making attracted a local gang. We were still in the shady neighborhoods. The playground was supposed to be empty and it was past two in the morning. The hoods brought guns and knives, but Stefan and I felt like gods. We relished a challenge. Normally, I would have simply fled or signaled to my ghoul to call the police. Tonight I was different. I almost cracked a rib laughing.  
“Go away!” I shouted at them. “We’re playing!”  
“Get the hell out of here, kids!” the gang leader pointed his gun at me in an attempt to scare me.  
I laughed harder and Stefan growled, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you!”  
The gangster fired lazily. Thugs love to spray bullets and hit nothing! It was usually dumb luck when they hit anything. They were not mobsters or true criminals like Al Capone and the Prohibition gangs of my time. I sighed and dodged the bullets, exhibiting the same laziness.  
“God, I miss the old days sometimes!” I said to my new companion.  
“Me too!”  
We fed off each other’s high and mutual blood lust. We mutilated the men with a sadistic pleasure I had never come close to engaging in before. Stefan ripped through flesh as though it was butter. I forced one gangster to shoot another. We left none alive. They had no chance in hell. We shared the last victim with me on the right side, chomping hard into the youth’s neck, Stefan was on the left side. We had just fed. We didn’t need the blood. For once, I didn’t care.  
“Be certain we left no mark!” I ordered Stefan boldly.  
He obeyed without argument. He seemed eager to obey me, “I could completely eradicate the corpses for you. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.”  
I laughed like a murderess, high on drugs, covered in gore. That’s exactly what I was. Stefan looked like an actor on the set of a horror show himself. I should have been repulsed.  
“Do you want to share blood?” Stefan asked abruptly. “I mean, I feed off you as you feed off me?”  
“You are still thirsty?” I hooted.  
“I want you to know me.”  
His tone became so serious that it punctured the air out of my high. I struggled not to let fear flicker in my eyes. I had only tasted my blood siblings. I gave my blood to my ghouls. I had never mutually exchanged blood. On reflection, there had been one: My Maker Vito and that had been during my transformation so even that was not quite the same thing.  
A human might make the mistake that it must be a sort of sexual impulse to my kind, that sort of exchange. Maybe it was for some, but not me. It was a sacred thing. Stefan and I had never grown up. We never experienced puberty, hormones, pheromones, anything to do with any of that sexuality business. It was pure exchange of memory, sensation, history, and blood. That’s what it was to me. I didn’t know exactly what it was to Stefan.  
“You would trust me enough to share blood with me?” I was flattered.  
“Completely,” Stefan answered without hesitation.  
“No one has ever asked to exchange blood with me,” I confessed.  
“Let me be the first.”  
I hesitated, staring at him. He didn’t flinch as he looked back at me. I decided that a hundred years was enough time. I threw back my head, exposing my throat in an expression of trust. Stefan was clutching me from behind in an instant, sinking his fangs in deep. I felt no pain, only a rush of endorphins. After our feasting, we had plenty of blood and energy to spare. I took hold of his wrist and sank my fangs in him. His skin was tougher.  
The sensation of feeding and being fed upon was entirely new. It was exciting. We could also probably keep the exchange and feeling going for a small eternity. That’s how it felt. I don’t know how long we stood there, his memories flooding mine, mine flooding his. We had taken the fast track getting to know each other. Perhaps it was too fast, but I think I enjoyed Stefan’s impulsiveness and aggressiveness. It felt good to have unconditional trust, to taste another, especially one that was like me.  
Child vampire meets child vampire. Alex meets Stefan. We are alike. For the moment, we are of one blood. Those were my thoughts. Then his flooded mine and he told me his story in a rush of blood.

I was born in some squalid village in Germany. Since I was born to shepherds near the beginning of the 1200’s, I had no records or surname. I was simply Stefan the peasant boy. My parents gave me to the Church to not only give me a better life but also as a bribe for their own souls. In those days and in our culture, it was expected that all parents give at least one child into the service of God. It was not nearly as bad as it sounds. If I had remained with my family I might have been recruited into the civil war raging on. My days in the monastery were the happiest of my life!  
I was learning to read and write in Latin and in Greek. I was destined to be one of the most educated men in Europe! I had three meals a day and a bed to sleep in. I had stone walls around me and a good roof. The most work I did was digging in the vegetable garden and washing linens. I was a prince of the Church. Jesus, Mary, the saints, and my Christian brethren was all that I needed. I would never starve like the siblings I never knew. I didn’t even miss my parents or remember their names. I believed so strongly in God and wanted desperately to become the next living saint. If only I had been content to remain an average monk, I would have died happy.  
After I turned ten, I began to have dreams of going to Jerusalem and preaching to the Muslim infidels. The Muslims had recently won back the Holy City. This was a terrible blow to Christendom. I thought maybe God was angry that the city had been taken by force. If Jerusalem was the bride of Jesus like the scriptures said, well then, the Crusaders hadn’t treated her very well. Perhaps God wanted the next crusade to be peaceful. I exaggerated a little and told the other monks and boys that I was wide awake and hearing an angel speak directly to me. I sincerely believed that God had spoken to me and given me a mission to bring as many followers as I could and set out on a peaceful crusade to win back the Holy City.  
To my surprise, many of the monks told me I must have only been dreaming. I was over-zealous. Some of them dared to accuse me of lying! I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t indulge my convictions. I had memorized so much scripture and could spout it back out with such charisma that I could show up any of the best priests. I was good, Alex! I convinced the children in the monastery to leave with me. Next, we marched to the nearby village singing the gospels and calling the faithful. They followed me to the next big town where we recruited the orphans and simpletons. My flock grew and grew as we traveled through Germany and our cause seemed more and more holy and true. My personal crusade would become known as part of the Children’s Crusade, a failed and miserable footnote in history.  
I was convinced that we wouldn’t fail. I told my followers that the Mediterranean would part its waters for us like the sea had parted for Mosses! We would walk to the Holy Land. God would provide us with manna and meat, milk and honey, water and wine. My followers fueled and fed the delusions of God and the cause. There were reports of many miracles and visions. There was a separate group of like-minded people being led forth from France by a man named Nicholas so that scholars got the details of both our campaigns muddled and confused. Even our names got switched around.  
Did I see or perform miracles? You are wondering that, Alex. Well, we interpreted most everything as a miracle so it is hard for me to say. There were thousands of us at our peak made up of almost entirely of children, youths fleeing war and poverty, invalids, and old misguided couples hoping for an easy way into Heaven. It wasn’t hard to fool and misguide us and we learned that the hardest way possible.  
We reached the shores of Italy and the sea. The journey there had been long and hard enough. We had survived on generosity, foraging, faith, and unabashed thievery. We carried begging bowls when we walked through towns and villages. Whenever we found unguarded wagons of food, we decided that it was a miracle left for us. We picked fields and orchards clean without asking for permission or leaving coin. We were still hungry and the seas didn’t part. I decided we must camp, fast, and pray.  
My people began to starve. Much worse, I thought then, their faith was fading faster than their bodies. My concern was for the soul. I was hungry too! I was angry when the crusaders began splintering. Some of my most dedicated gave up then and there and turned back for home! I decided maybe I was expecting the wrong miracle. I prayed diligently for a sign from God, any sign!  
My answer came from two merchants. Hugh and William, they called themselves. They offered free passage on boats to as many children as were willing to take it. I trusted in God and was starving, Alex. I accepted and many followed my example. We were not delivered from evil like God had always promised. Instead, we were directly led into it.  
The merchants took nearly every child not to the Holy Land, but to Tunisia. We were all to be sold like chattel into slavery. My ship was taken by a gale wind and shipwrecked on San Pietro Island off the coast of Sardinia, Italy. Our slavers were drowned, but so were many of the children. I survived along with only a handful of other kids on what little the island could provide. The followers of mine that didn’t get baited into the slave boats either died of exhaustion, starved or wandered like lost lambs all over Europe. Not one of them made it to Jerusalem.  
Needless to say, I felt like an utter failure. San Pietro had no fresh water streams or rivers. There were only pond and marshes. Most of it was steep and rocky. It was uninhabited at the time by humans. There was Eleonora falcons, fish, crabs, and vampires. Strix is what they were called in that time and region. Our encounter with one of them was brief, but it changed everything. It changed us forever.  
We were trying to hunt and bring down one of the falcons with stones from a hastily made sling. I thought I had finally hit one because it dove down out of sight behind an outcrop of rock and didn’t appear again. Instead of finding a bird, there was a man hiding there. No wonder Strix were thought to transform into birds. I thought the man must be an angel. He was so pale, his skin was almost translucent. He had been trying to take shelter from the sun. His hair was long and filthy with seaweed. There was barely pigment in his eyes and hair. He had not fed for so long. When he spoke, it was in some dead language. My best guess is that it was Etruscan. When he saw that we didn’t understand, he tried Latin.  
“Little children?” he spoke as though he was only just recalling how. I was filled with such hope! I thought at last we would get some divine help. I begged him for God’s commands, for salvation, for food or passage home. The vampire just stared as I blubbered and then he began to laugh. He didn’t recognize the sacred name of Jesus, Mary, Saint Peter or the Apostle Paul! He had no clue what the Holy Land was! He was definitely no angel. Even a demon would have at least understood.  
Once he was done laughing, he snatched the nearest child and drained her. Realizing too late that this was some sort of monster, we ran. The creature launched after me. He made me what I am today. He made me and then he abandoned me, Alex! My Maker and my God orphaned me that day as some sort of cruel joke!  
I was clueless! I didn’t know what I was! I didn’t know the name of my Maker and never saw him again! I cried blood tears and thought I was dying. The sunlight began to hurt me, not like sunburn, but it felt like my insides were hurting! I craved blood so that when my followers found me, I copied the actions of my Maker. I drained them and made them vampires. One of them couldn’t survive the transformation. I didn’t know about the limitations vampires have when they try to make more. I thought I had to share my blood.  
Those of us that were left stood on the shore of one of the few beaches on the island, weeping for blood and for our souls. We snatched fish easily from the salt waters and swallowed them whole. That sated nothing! We caught falcons and drained them dry. That eased our pain only for a little while. We began to guess what we really needed. Our thirst forced us to make the four mile swim to the coast of Sardinia. If we had not been vampires, we wouldn’t have succeeded. I’m certain that we would have remained on that island and died.  
We feasted on the first humans we saw. After those murders, my followers cried out that we were damned. A hope hatched in me that if we just made it to Jerusalem, God would cure us. We had been stricken for doubting him and our mission. We were supposed to realize that those merchants were slavers. We were being punished. The others wanted to believe it just as much as I did. We continued on toward the Holy City.  
It took a long time, Alex. We had to make the journey on foot and travel only by night. We fed on lonely pilgrims and kept praying and hoping. I kept preaching and proselytizing along the way. If I happened upon an infidel, I tried to force them to convert before I fed on them. I thought God would reward me for that.  
After thirteen months and walking through thirteen different countries, we finally made it. We had arrived in Jerusalem! I expected us to change back into human children. I expected an angel to greet us. I had pictured only romantic images of what the Holy City should look like in my head. It was supposed to be white, clean, and beautiful! It was supposed to be the heart of Christendom, the place where Jesus died on the cross! The pope had promised it was salvation and heaven on earth! How wrong that was!  
The city was under Muslim rule at the time and was considered mostly a backwater village rather than a Holy City. The population was still trying to recover from the great genocides led by the Christian Crusaders almost a century before. It was not painted white. There were no images of Jesus or the saints. There were beggars and lepers in the streets just like in any other city. It allowed Christian and Jewish visitors if they paid a hefty tax. The Muslims proved to be far more reasonable and tolerant than the Christian Crusaders had ever been. We paid it with money we had collected from victims along the way. I preached and prayed near the holiest sites. I was kicked and cursed at. We fed on the lepers standing upon the very steps of the temple.  
We should have been cured or stricken down. I wanted the Creator to do one or the other. But God did nothing! Our faith was shattered and so were the minds of nearly all my flock. A few of them destroyed themselves, throwing themselves into fire or refusing to feed until they starved. All that was left was Amon and his sister Adela of all of my original followers. It was not God or Death that claimed us. It was another vampire. The fact that there were vampires lurking the streets of the Holy City shouldn’t have been a shock to us, but it was. She was a vampire pilgrim!  
“You children should be destroyed! Where is your Maker? Who dared to break the Laws of Lilith and Cain?” she screeched when she saw us.  
“Who is Lilith? I know who Cain is, but not the woman you name,” I said. “Do we look like Moors to you?”  
I asked the last question because I had been taught that the Mark of Cain was dark skin, not the fangs of a vampire. The vampiress looked a bit Moorish herself. Dorcus was her name and she took pity on us. She was impressed that we had actually made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. She brought us to the Council in Rome, pleaded for us, educated us, and gave us a new religion and purpose. She took us back home to our native Germany. I searched for her years later, but not even the Council knows what became of her. She exists no more. Vampires vanish like that all too often.  
I am a priest of Lilith and Cain, Alex, just like your Maker. Your Vito was actually younger than I, but I wish I had met him! You are so young, Alex, so full of life and still so human in many ways. I am glad I found you! You must meet my coven! You have denied yourself the company of other vampires too long, denied yourself the comfort of Lilith and Cain, denied yourself and your nature! I would love to teach you and to finish what your Maker started!

I broke away from Stefan at last. He had filled me completely. Euphoria crashed over me in waves like the exact opposite of a migraine. He was overwhelming me a little too much. Vampire blood is different than human blood. Human blood was for food and sustenance. Vampire blood was for communication and pleasure. I knew this now. My legs were twitchy.  
Stefan seemed equally affected. His pupils were dilated and his breaths were shaky. He must have seen my own experiences flash before him and my thoughts and sensations as I absorbed his. He had at least seen Vito. I had a sudden urge to wrap my arms around him and I did.  
Gus was watching us awkwardly. I sensed my ghoul and heard police sirens. We needed to flee the scene. I realized as though for the first time that we had brutally killed with relish and when it wasn’t entirely necessary. I began to feel nagging guilt as the drug and blood effects faded.  
“Why would you feel guilty?” it was as though Stefan could read my mind or maybe I was that transparent. “These humans attacked us first. The police will call this routine gang warfare.”  
“You are probably right.”  
“Let’s go then.”  
I led him to far safer streets. As we walked, we collected ourselves. Our highs were finally fading away.  
“You are over eight hundred years old!” I still could hardly believe it. “I am only turning a hundred and ten! You have seen so much, done so much…”  
“Ah, so that means you have been a vampire for a century! What a special occasion!”  
“Special? Not really,” I murmured. “So you have no idea who it was that made you?”  
Stefan made a face, “I showed you everything in the blood already. You might have even seen him just as I did the day it happened. Why do you wish to discuss me? I was about to congratulate you on all that you achieved in a mere century! You are a Guardian and living completely on your own!”  
“I have Gus.”  
“A ghoul is no vampire.”  
“Gus has been with me for over twenty years. I’ve saved his life and he’s looked out for mine.”  
“It’s still not the same. Not even close, Alex. Don’t fool yourself. I could tell how lonely you are. There’s no need to lie to me.”  
“Well, maybe we can still find your Maker.”  
“I tried that centuries ago! I searched the islands of Italy. I asked the Council to hunt him down. He has never been found. He was ancient, decrepit, and probably insane. I’m certain he is dead. Besides, I wouldn’t want to know him! Few of us have the sort of relationship that you did with your Maker. I envy you, Alex.”  
“I had to watch him burn,” I said mournfully.  
“Yes. That was very hard to watch. I’m sorry. He didn’t deserve that.”  
I was surprised by his last comment, “He had heretical ideas! He was going insane too near the end.”  
“Heretical ideas? Have you really become so dogmatic over the decades? You don’t even think Lilith is real!”  
“You got that sort of information from my blood?”  
He nodded.  
“Well, you aren’t very dogmatic either! How have you possibly gotten away with making so many child vampires?”  
“I have an Elder in Germany that granted permission every time. That’s all that is needed, after all: The written permission of one Elder sent to the Council. They look for the signature, nothing else.”  
“Why children?”  
“Because they make perfect vampires.”  
“Perfect vampires?” I parroted him. “Perfect vampires!”  
I was ready to bite his head off, but he put his hands up and said, “That’s enough for now. You must meet my coven. Then perhaps you will begin to understand. We should make an event of your first hundred years! I’ll have a ghoul fetch you. We’ll find a place to set up our coven in the city. I promise to make my followers behave. They’ll continue to feed outside of the city and on their ghouls.”  
I couldn’t think of a good excuse to say no off the top of my head. Stefan took advantage of my hesitation and slipped away. Gus slowly approached and took my hand.  
“Wow, you’ve never felt hot to the touch before!’ he exclaimed.  
“It feels good, doesn’t it? To be warm and alive.”  
“Alex, you scared me tonight.”  
I gave him a puzzled look.  
“You have never killed like that before. I know you are the Guardian here and Stefan was protecting and following you, but why did it seem like he was influencing you so much?”  
“What the hell do you know?” I lost my temper. “You don’t know anything about vampires or me! You are just a ghoul and a doomed drug addict before I found you!”  
We winced at the same time. He was hurt, and I regretted saying what I said immediately. I blamed the short withdrawal symptoms I was experiencing. I missed the taste of Stefan’s blood already and the closeness of him.  
“I’m sorry, Gus,” I let out a deep sigh. “Just take me home, please.”  
“I should have taken you home immediately after the heroin house!”  
I got into our car and we drove back to our apartment back in Irving Park in complete silence. I gave Gus some extra blood to make up for the way I had treated him. I had an excess of blood anyway. Then I crawled into my bedroom to sleep through the morning.  
As I slept, I saw Vito again for the first time in decades. He was writing in a journal and ignoring me. I sat at his side, enjoying his presence. Usually when Vito spoke in my dreams, the words were nonsensical, silent, or useless because I forgot them anyhow upon the waking.  
“Who’s this boy I’ve seen around you recently, Alex?” he said very clearly and crisply.  
“What?” I raised my head, overjoyed and baffled by the question.  
“The boy whose blood flows in your veins right now.”  
He sounded so tickled. A bemused grin spread across his face. I blushed with anger and embarrassment. Vito poked me with his fountain pen. For a moment, I didn’t believe I was dreaming. Vito was behaving exactly how he did when he was alive! He wasn’t acting like ‘dream Vito’ at all. When he jabbed my ribs thoughtlessly, I felt it. I let out childish giggles. How I had missed my Maker! I wanted to slap him and hug him at the same time!  
“I think my little girl has a crush!”  
“No! No, I don’t!” I was still giggling and blushed redder. “Stop poking me!”  
“Would that be such a terrible thing, Alex?”  
The stab of terror I felt was ten times worse than the cap of his pen. Vito pulled me into his lap. I felt like a little girl again, safe in papa’s strong arms. I hoped that I would never wake up.  
“Do you remember what I told you years ago, Alex?” Vito’s voice was soft. “If you decide to love someone, you will find your own way to do it. I want you to be happy, even if that happiness is only temporary.”  
Before I could ask him what that meant, I woke up. I cursed and searched the room for my Maker. I couldn’t get back to sleep, and I couldn’t return to the dream. When I sat to have dinner with Gus, I was still wondering if I had been dreaming after all. I was so pensive Gus got concerned, but I promised him that I was alright. I shut myself into the shrine room I had created. I pricked my finger and shed an offering of blood to Lilith. I prayed for another dream, another visit from Vito. Like most prayers though, this one went unanswered. 

A ghoul came to fetch me a few weeks later, just as Stefan had promised. I felt a bit like I was going into a lion’s den. I kept Gus at home to keep him safe. I had exchanged and killed with Stefan, but I wasn’t stupid enough to completely trust him. I had a letter from Senenmut for him and his followers. I wasn’t sure how they would react to what he said. I wouldn’t send someone else to be my messenger. I needed to confront my battles. It was my duty.  
Stefan and his followers had taken over the St. Boniface Church in the West Town area of Chicago. I was a bit surprised. I had thought Stefan would have picked the St. Stephen’s Church in Hyde Park on account of the name. It was a gothic structure and looked more like the stereotypical place for vampires, but it had been purchased by an owner in 2015 and was guarded and there were plans for dangerous and heavy reconstruction. The St. Boniface Church was built in 1903 for the German immigrants. I supposed it was the perfect place for the coven in that regard. It had been abandoned for nearly thirty years.  
The outside of the building was in excellent condition since it was built with brick. The Chicago Fire motivated many architects to choose brick. Eckhart Park stood in the shadow of its four bell towers, the tallest being a hundred and fifty feet high. The interior had a gorgeous Romanesque design. Even better, a school building that was also part of the property was to the east in the Louis Sullivan style. It had twelve classrooms with an auditorium, meeting hall, kitchen, and even a bowling alley. It was awfully convenient for the child vampires that slept two to three to a room in sleeping bags. They were forced to cover almost all the windows. Most of the stained glass windows still had the original framing and the children needed protection from the sun.  
Stefan came out to greet me. I couldn’t help but look at the vein at his throat and salivate at the thought of his blood in my mouth. There was a bit of mischief in his eyes, so he must have been craving the same. He led me into the school where I counted about thirty vampire children in all. They wore modern clothing but I could see the red robes of Cain and Lilith hanging in the auditorium on a coat rack they had brought with them. Each child had at least one ghoul that remained silent with vapid looks on their faces. The children introduced themselves to me.  
There were two in particular that I noticed above all the others. I had seen their images before in Stefan’s blood memories. Amon was a tall and dark-haired child. His eyes were dark as well and critical when they held mine.  
The girl at his side was the spitting image of Adela, but when she introduced herself, she insisted that her name was Hilda. She had dirty blonde curls and eyes of emerald green, very catlike in the dark. Amon had been made hours after Stefan, so his aura felt almost as powerful. I supposed Hilda must have been made to replace Adela his sister. She didn’t seem to be very much younger.  
The rest of the coven varied wildly in age and personality. Not all of them were German. Stefan had traveled for a time, adopting many orphans and runaways from all over the globe. There was an even number of boys and girls. The youngest pair were only made a few years before and looked like a pair of identical twins. They were an impressive lot and behaved like adults, even the twins. Most looked as though they were made vampires at ten years old, a magic number it seemed, but that wasn’t true of all of them. There was a little boy named Fritz that could have been no more than four or five.  
“Why did you make this one so young?” I blurted.  
His followers gave me sharp and confused looks. Stefan’s face was blank. I hadn’t meant to question Stefan so soon and not in front of his followers, but I just couldn’t help it. There was still baby fat in Fritz’s face and his nose was too similar to the button nose of an infant.  
“I saved him from a gas chamber!” Stefan said with iciness.  
“Oh!” I paled at the thought. “How?”  
“I knew I couldn’t save all the Jews. I selected one quickly.”  
“He who saves one life saves the world entire?” I quoted Hebrew scripture.  
“Something like that.”  
“Do you remember your family, Fritz?”  
He glared, “Don’t talk to me like I’m a baby! I am over seventy-six years old!”  
“Sorry,” my voice had instinctively gone high-pitched and I cleared my throat to normalize it. “Do you remember anything about being human?”  
“I was one of the Jewish orphans from France. That is, my parents were sent ahead to Auschwitz months before me to be gassed to death. The Nazis wanted to spare children for a short while before they quickly changed their minds. I remember asking the French people around me to adopt me and having violent dysentery. That’s about it.”  
“That’s it? Don’t you remember anything good? What was your favorite food? Did you celebrate Sabbath? Did your parents kiss you goodbye? Did you have any siblings?”  
“I don’t remember. All that seemed to matter was that we were all filthy Jews!”  
I glanced at Stefan in horror and he said quickly, “Our human pasts don’t matter. What matters is that we are all pure Children of the Blood. We serve Lilith and Cain. We come together as a family to worship Lilith and feed on wicked mortals as Cain intended. Each one of my flock have talents especially nurtured to better serve. Amon and Hilda are composers that rival Bach and Beethoven! Fritz can make and repair instruments. Charlotte is a violinist. The new pair can play guitars. Every one of us can sing and dance. We plan to perform a concert tonight. You are welcome to attend. It would be good for you, Alex.”  
“Of course I will.”  
“We do intend to celebrate your one hundred years of being a vampire. Can’t forget that.”  
I laughed, “Don’t tell me you have a birthday cake and balloons and confetti ready to shower on me?”  
“Nothing so silly. We’ll just play music and dance. We have a projector. We could put on some film.”  
“How about a private audience with you?”  
Amon snickered. Stefan cast him a dark glance then smiled at me again.  
“Yes, we should talk privately now. Mind entering the church with me? In a few minutes, the rest may join us.”  
“Sounds good.”  
I strode after him. The interior of the church was in some disrepair. The wood was rotting and crumbling in places, but it was not a lost cause yet. I had passed the church and even gone inside it for sermons with Vito, but that had been a lifetime ago. I hoped the city wouldn’t demolish the place any time soon. Stefan lit some candles as I leaned against the podium.  
“First impressions of my coven?”  
“They’re all too young!” I snapped. “Fritz! Just what were you thinking when you made that one?”  
“I told you-“  
“You saved him from a gas chamber and turned him into one of us! You didn’t ‘save’ him, Stefan! You created a monster that has no shred of humanity because he had no chance to develop any semblance of it! Saving him would have been smuggling him back to a loving human family!”  
“Do you know what it was like watching swastikas being paraded through the streets of France? My coven and I fled Germany as soon as the party started to gain a foothold. We couldn’t escape them! Do you know what it was like to have real Nazis march along, firing at and killing people before your eyes? They are nothing like the Neo-Nazis that march with signs in front of your White House! It seemed to me as though Europe was in the clutches of the Anti-Christ and the end of days was upon us! It seemed to me like Hitler would destroy the world! He almost did destroy the Jews! It was a human that was responsible for millions of deaths. A vampire couldn’t hope to reach that sort of number!”  
“Couldn’t you have chosen a teenager or a fully grown man or woman? Again, why did it have to be a four year old kid!”  
“How is my rescue of Fritz any different than Vito’s rescue and making of you? Fitz is a living symbol of all the child victims of the Holocaust. He lives forever for them!”  
I lost my patience for a second. I slammed my hands down upon the wooden podium with a dusty old Bible upon it. A cloud of dust puffed up in the air around me, causing a coughing and sneezing fit.  
“Don’t you dare compare your motives to my Maker’s!” I coughed out. “I was really dying when Vito made me and I never blamed him for what he did and why because of that! Never! There was no saving me from anything else but death! When you found Fritz, was he on a cattle train, standing in line at the gas chambers, or was he literally chocking on the Zyklon gas?”  
“Why does it matter?”  
“Because the devil is in the finer details! Where did you find him?”  
“About to board a cattle train. It was on its way to Auschwitz!”  
“Then you could have surrendered him to the French Resistance alive and unmade.”  
“I gave him the Gift of Lilith. Why make another Jewish war orphan? Why would anyone spurn immortality? What exactly makes Fritz unfit? Humanity is an idea, and the proof is in how humans treat each other! Just wait for World War III, Alex! Mark my words: It’ll be your country that provokes it and the Holocaust, the rape of Nanking, Unit 731 of Japan, all of those things will pale in comparison to the thousands of Hiroshimas and Nagasakis that America will unleash! Vampires are not the monsters on this planet!”  
“World War II was over seventy years ago. No one, absolutely no one, wants a third. Humans are not that stupid! You sound like a paranoid doomsday occultist to me, Stefan! Besides, you’ve been violating the laws of Lilith and Cain all along. I have orders from the Council. They are going to prosecute the Elder that has been allowing you to keep making child vampires. You are ordered never to make another vampire again. Your followers are also forbidden!”  
I cast Senenmut’s letter at him. It had the official documents and declarations in with it. Stephen ripped open the envelope and glared at every word. I paced as his eyes wandered.  
“Your Maker would be proud of you,” Stefan said sarcastically. “Running around and eagerly carrying out the will of the very people that burned him!”  
“I swear if you keep talking about my Maker-“  
“You’ll snitch to your Grand-Maker?”  
I snarled, showing off my fangs. It was stupid of me. It was the vampire equivalent of drawing a sword or a gun. Luckily, Stefan thought it was cute. He laughed and his mood turned on a dime. I was a little uneasy at how quickly it had changed. Did my show come off as that pathetic?  
“I won’t miss the Elder. He was corrupt as hell and kept a child vampire of his own. It was a sick fetish. My followers are my friends and only a few are of my blood. Amon made Hilda; Hilda made Samuel, and so on and so forth. Fritz was the last I created personally. I’m not looking for new recruits at the moment. Not since I found you.”  
“Me?”  
“Someone created you all on their own. They may be rare, but there’s got to be others like you. We’ll invite them all to join us.”  
“What makes you think I would consider joining your little cult? Even if I did, I have responsibilities here!”  
“All religions are a cult, Alex.”  
“You know making child vampires is wrong, don’t you? Why should you get away with doing it for so long?”  
“Technically, Lilith’s commandments don’t specify an age. You should know that as a Priestess. The qualities and soul of the vampire is what matters. We are not human and that is an absolute good thing. You should use your own brain, Alex, and not blindly do whatever it is that the Council tells you to do.”  
“What did you just say?” I gasped, clutching Vito’s vial at my throat.  
“I said: Use your brain.”  
I pretended to pore through the pages of the old bible as Stefan’s followers began to enter the Church. They carried instruments, chairs, and sound equipment. Stefan joined them at their work. I decided to stay. Stefan had agreed to the Council’s orders. What more could I expect of him now, after all? Hilda and Amon sat with me in the pews.  
Hilda whispered to me, “We always thought Fritz was far too young ourselves.”  
“Did anyone bother to tell Stefan that to his face?”  
“He didn’t consult anyone and no one would have objected at the time. Fritz has become a brother to us. We can’t imagine life without him.”  
“So you are all really one big happy family? Am I supposed to buy that?”  
“We aren’t selling you anything, Alex. If we told you we were a happy family, you would be right not to believe it. There are little rivalries. Some of the other children are more zealous about the faith than others. Charlotte has paired with Fritz then decided she liked Samuel better. Samuel has tried to steal me away from Amon and failed miserably many times. The ghouls get a little unruly. Fights and squabbles break out nearly every day. It’s no different than most covens or families. You know that vampires usually remain in covens or paired with a lover? Lonely vampires are the outlier.”  
“In other words, you are the freak, Alex,” Amon didn’t say it maliciously.  
“I’ve always known that.”  
“Maybe you’re not so bad then,” Amon graced me with his first smile. “What did you and Stefan talk about?”  
“The Council doesn’t want any more child vampires,” I decided not to lie to them or evade the question.  
“We follow the will of Lilith,” Hilda squeezed Amon’s shoulder. “It’s your turn to conduct, darling.”  
Amon gave her a kiss and I felt uncomfortable at the display. It was doubly uncomfortable because they were children acting like an old couple. It was not the same as Vladimir and Mishka or Sunako and Wanjohi. It wasn’t that I thought it was wrong, it was just odd. I glanced at Stefan and began to blush again.  
When the coven performed their music, I was spell-bound. They played a variety of songs in a plethora of languages with so many instruments. They played string and wood instruments, brass and drums, and yes, the twins pulled out electric guitars. They sang classical madrigals and more recent pop songs. They played some jazz and heavy metal symphonic music.  
The most amazing thing was their singing. They sang with the skill and experience of opera singers but with children’s voices. They really did sound like angels. Hilda had the most beautiful voice of all. When she sang solo, I cried bloody tears.  
Suddenly, the coven broke out into an old birthday song and a ghoul brought in the projector. Stefan had warned me, but I still tried to duck out of sight in embarrassment. I also knew it was pointless to tell them that my vampire transformation hadn’t occurred so early in the year. I was turned in the month of October, not January. It wouldn’t have mattered. It was just an excuse for a celebration.  
Each of his coven members tried to tackle me and congratulate me, to sing directly into my ears and make me get up and sing. Stefan laughed as he got the projector working. The film that played was the movie adaption of the musical Chicago. I squealed with delight.  
“How did you know this was one of my favorites?” I shouted at Stefan. “The blood told you that too?”  
“No, just a lucky guess!” he shouted back. “The title seemed appropriate.”  
I knew every song by heart and had practiced all the dance numbers. It seemed there were some fans among his followers as well. When All that Jazz started, I got up to dance. Hilda joined me. She played the part of Velma and I played the part of Roxy. It was genuine fun! She was almost as good a dancer as she was a singer. I was merely an average singer and my dancing was worse. I didn’t care. Hilda was so amazing that she helped me forget I was a clumsy kid trying and failing to upstage her.  
When Stefan hopped up to join in, I got awkward and sank into the spectators’ pews. Stefan didn’t mention my sudden shyness and neither did anyone else.  
Unlike the night Stefan and I had gone wild, everyone was sober. The ghouls might have been high, but the vampires weren’t. There was no killing or feeding. There was only music, laughter, and dancing. No one in the coven was making me feel unwelcome or unwanted. The opposite was happening. I was being love-bombed and thoroughly enjoying it.  
There was something about the simple company of other child vampires that was deeply satisfying. The only other time I was around other vampires was at the required festivals of Lilith and Cain with the Council. Those were dull affairs with adult vampires more powerful and serious than I. Half of the coven were older than I, but the other half were my contemporaries or younger.  
Fritz came up and kissed me on the cheek at some point during the night. I suppose he wanted me to know there was no bad blood. Others followed suit, kissing my cheek or hand. When Stefan took his turn, he kissed me on the lips.  
It wasn’t a passionate kiss. It was just a peck really, but I reeled with shock for a moment. I had exchanged blood with him, but I had never kissed a boy before. In over a hundred years, I had never been kissed! His coven erupted in laughter at my reaction. I turned white as the sheets hanging from the church windows and steeple. My eyes were bulging. Stefan actually blushed as it dawned on him what he must have done without realizing.  
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know that was your first. Maybe I shouldn’t have-“  
“It’s alright.”  
I put my hand on his chest to gently push him away. Amon gave me a kiss on the cheek after him. Hilda kissed my brow. They must have felt the way I trembled and seen the way my chest rose and fell a little too quickly. If I had a heart beat, it would have been hammering in my chest.  
“Alex, are you thirsty?” Fritz asked. “You can feed on my ghoul. You are welcome to remain with us when dawn comes too. There’s an extra sleeping bag in my room.”  
“No thanks. I prefer my own bed.”  
I got up to leave. Stefan had fetched my coat and it was his own ghoul that was driving me home.  
“Will you return tomorrow evening? We plan to hold a ceremony. That way you can see how we worship.”  
“And prove that you’re not a dangerous, maniacal sex cult?” I cracked.  
He laughed, “It is simply an offer for you to join in worship.”  
“You know, Stefan, it would be nice to spend time with you away from your coven and without ghouls. Do you enjoy modern movies or theatre?”  
“I do.”  
“Pick something and maybe we can see it.”  
“How about this: We’ll see a movie together and for every movie or show we attend, you join my coven for a service?”  
“Deal.”  
I reached out my hand for him to shake and he clasped it. I made the deal because I knew I needed to learn more about his little cult. I needed to know if he would keep his word to the Council. I needed to know if he was a threat. I was also intrigued. His blood was calling to me, but I pulled away and got into the car and returned home. 

Stefan and I met at a local cinema. He brought Amon and Hilda along with him. He must have decided that being alone in a dark room with him would make me uncomfortable. The fact that he brought company only succeeded in making me more uncomfortable. Now it seemed like we were on a double date.  
Amon and Hilda held hands and nuzzled each other as I stared at the skull of the movie-goer in front of me. The first sermon I attended was equally dull. The coven sang typical hymns of worship, made a blood offering, and then they all scuttled away to partake in their hobbies or to drink from their ghouls. Fritz tried to engage me in small talk.  
“I think my little fledgling has a crush on you!” Stefan’s eyes twinkled as he led me out to the car.  
“Fritz? I’m sorry, but the baby face is too terribly distracting for me to ever fall for him! What can I say to let him down easy?”  
“Tell him that you have feelings for someone else. Fritz should know very well who that might be.”  
I chewed my lip as I climbed into my seat.  
The next Sunday, I met again with Stefan, Amon and Hilda. We voted on another movie, but after a quarter in, I squeezed Stefan’s hand. We slipped to an empty row of seats in the back of the theater. We had been craving each other’s blood for weeks. I lunged to feed and he held me back for a second. I pouted at him, hungry. Why in the blazes was he stopping me?  
“I told Fritz that you are mine,” he said, his eyes glowing blue and as bright as the projector.  
I flashed him a teasing smile, “Ok.”  
“Ok?”  
“If that gets Fritz off my back, then ok.”  
He nipped my lower lip and gauged my reaction. I nipped back. Next thing I knew, we were kissing. I had no idea what I was doing, but Stefan had all the experience that I didn’t. He whispered endearments in German. I bit the tip of his thumb, desperate for blood. He bit into the meat of my shoulder. I filled his head with images of romantic scenes from the golden age of Hollywood and he filled my eyes with visions of Lilith and Cain. He kept breaking away to kiss me and bite me on my neck and arms. I took his wrist in my mouth.  
I couldn’t be bothered to remember what movie we were supposed to be watching. Amon and Hilda found the two of us still locked together long after it was finished screening. Hilda laughed at us, but Amon’s expression remained serious. I wondered why he always acted like such a brooding sourpuss! At least Stefan was impulsive and fun!  
We returned to the St. Boniface Church for service. Tonight was a bit more of a special occasion. It was one of the lunar festivals so that it went longer and was more formal than the rest of the month’s services. I slipped on the red robes of Lilith and Cain like everyone else. It didn’t matter that I was observing rather than participating, it would have been rude not to wear the clothing.  
Stefan spoke more passionately than before and at the end of the ceremony he called his flock to share blood. I waited for the communal bowl to be passed around. This was the part when every vampire shed a few drops into the bowl so that everyone became intermingled within it. Only then was it passed around for a second time so that the congregation could drink a small sip. Stefan’s coven had been no different than all the others in that.  
This was not the case tonight. Instead of passing around a bowl, Stefan’s followers began to feed directly from each other. They were all exchanging. One vampire was biting into the wrist of the vampiress next to him while she was being fed upon by the child next to her and so on. I had to look around me twice to get over my shock. This was never done even during the most important annual festivals at the Council. This was far too intimate and personal. They were exchanging with their ghouls too!  
Little Fritz turned to me for a taste, but I shook my head and backed away at the sight of his fangs coming toward me. Stefan wrapped his arms around me from behind. Miraculously, he seemed to understand what I was feeling. He shook his head and Fritz turned to exchange with someone else. Thankfully, he didn’t appear to be hurt. Stefan stood in place with his arms around me the whole time. He did not share in the exchanging either. I wondered if he always stood aside and watched or if he was making an exception for me.  
When the ceremony was over and his followers had returned to the schoolhouse, I helped Stefan to clean up afterwards.  
“I wasn’t expecting what happened at the end there,” I told him. “Thank you for realizing that I was uncomfortable and thank you for not forcing me to partake.”  
“I would never force anyone to exchange blood, Alex,” he reassured me. “That would be akin to rape. It’s a fact that covens and other vampires don’t exchange as part of a ceremony, but you must understand that my coven is quite different.”  
“That was obvious from the moment that I saw your followers.”  
“Well, what I meant is that my coven is a family. We have been together a long time and we are all blood siblings in one way or another. Other covens are more of a hodgepodge of characters that band together out of necessity for short spans. Sharing our blood makes our weaker ones grow stronger and our empathic bond is renewed every time.”  
I left unsaid my thought that this sounded like a perfect way to manipulate his flock. Instead I said, “I honestly don’t feel comfortable exchanging with anyone but you right now.”  
He smiled, “That is perfectly fine. One should be wary with whom they share such a thing with. Lilith herself said that her gift shouldn’t be granted unwisely. I will not partake either if you prefer. I normally do, but I know it would be rather awkward if you tasted and sensed the blood of others mingling with mine whenever you exchanged with me.”  
I didn’t know how to respond. What he offered was generous, but I was disturbed that he practiced exchanging so frequently and with so many. What would his followers think of me if he started denying himself and them? He belonged to them and not me. Hilda and Amon were lovers but they had no qualms sharing their blood with their siblings. I would appear selfish and jealous. I wanted to tell him that deep down; I really was selfish and jealous. I wasn’t ready to exchange so freely. In that moment, I seriously began to doubt whether I should have ever exchanged with even Stefan. If he had shared his blood with them that night, my blood would have been flowing in their veins with or without my consent.  
I didn’t speak aloud my thoughts. I merely wished him goodnight. He looked concerned, but I didn’t care. The next time he sent his ghoul to fetch me, I excused myself. I didn’t feel like going on another movie date with multiple vampires or even the one vampire. Instead, I ate dinner with Gus and patrolled my streets. I needed fresh blood anyway and remembered how it had gone with Stefan along for the hunt. I wished to kill discreetly and in peace.  
I loitered around Mickey’s family home. I was fortunate enough to catch them roasting marshmallows and other camp foods in their backyard. How Mike was growing! If my memory served, I was fairly certain that he was supposed to turn ten years old within the season.  
I watched them at a safe distance and glowed with pride. Barbara was visiting her grandchildren despite the fact that she was getting on in age. In her last letter to me she had complained about her most recent surgery. I made up ailments and recommended a certain doctor for her to make an appointment with. It was hard to picture her as the little girl I drank tea with now that she was a successful matriarch!  
I was deep in thought when I felt Stefan’s presence. It was barely within my range, but it was getting closer. I was a little annoyed. I had wanted this night to myself. I would have to remind my new boyfriend that I was not one of his sheep! I was also wary of him trying to feed on my human family.  
“Stefan?” I called to the dark.  
“What‘s wrong?” he was at my side within a mortal’s heartbeat.  
“This group of humans is very dear to me,” I began to explain to him and I pointed out every family member and gave him their names.  
“Why do you care for these humans so much in particular?”  
“Did you see Mickey when we exchanged the first time?”  
“Who?”  
“The Russian boy that almost exposed me.”  
“Oh that boy. Yes. You seemed to be in love with him.”  
“Is that how it seemed to you?”  
Stefan shrugged, “As close to love as you ever chanced to get. Must we argue semantics? That would easily explain your attachment. The child looks like his spitting image.”  
“He is.”  
“Have you ever considered turning him?”  
“Never!” I hissed.  
“Why not?”  
“I don’t share your beliefs, Stefan! I think making child vampires on purpose is an evil thing!”  
“You don’t really and truly believe that or you would hate your Maker and destroy yourself. If you hadn’t had it drilled into your head by the other priests and priestesses that it was wrong-“  
“No! It’s wrong because I know it’s wrong! The Council has nothing to do with it!”  
“So if your Grand-Maker declared that me and my coven must be destroyed would you think that was a good thing?” he snapped.  
“No,” my voice was small. “I like them all. They aren’t evil abominations.”  
Stefan sighed with relief and said sincerely, “Thank you!”  
“I don’t think you’re evil either. Obviously, I like you, Stefan. I just wonder what if the children had been allowed to grow up? I think that you were orphaned and that you were misguided.”  
“I think you are close-minded. You have never made a vampire. You don’t even seem to like your own kind! I suppose I can’t blame you. If you turned Mike, though, you could have your Mickey back! You could finally answer that burning question: What if Mickey and I had more time? What could we have been? Doesn’t that idea make you the least bit happy or curious?”  
“I don’t want to fall into that trap. That child only looks like Mickey. I would be stealing him from his family and future. Some questions are better left unanswered. Some things are not meant to be. Besides, wouldn’t you be jealous if I made my own fledgling? What if I decided to groom him to be my lover?”  
“I would have no right to be jealous.”  
I grinned at him, “You would have no right, but you would be jealous anyway, wouldn’t you? If you deny it, you would be lying and I wouldn’t believe you.”  
“That’s because you are sharp as a whip,” he grinned back at me. “Do you still want to catch a movie? Amon and Hilda are taking over tonight’s sermon for me so you don’t have to partake in that either.”  
“So finally a date with no strings?” I said in amazement.  
“None.”  
“You can be very reasonable, Stefan.”  
“I recall you saying that before.”  
“You’re much more charming when you’re reasonable.”  
“You don’t really believe that either.”  
“Maybe not.”

A snowstorm hit Chicago and much of the state in February of that year in a nine day record breaking weather event. It was something that the coven couldn’t resist being a part of. All of us gathered together and went out to the Maggie Daley Park to play in the snow. There was at least four inches of it. In some areas of the city the snow piled up over a foot. We wore heavy coats to blend in with the humans better and to keep the younger vampires warm. The cold was barely noticeable to me and Stefan and some of the others. We took several ghouls with us to be token guardians of so many sets of kids.  
There were so many children sledding, skiing, skating in the Skating Ribbon, wall climbing, and building forts to defend against snow ball fights. It wasn’t the most snow we had ever seen, but it was still a roaring good time for the coven. Vampire children mixed among human children at their snow games.  
The kids were generous with their sleds and gear. We had to remind the less experienced of our members to take their time with everything they did. They must walk and never run and never use their full strength. We didn’t want to expose our true speeds and strengths. It was a good test of the coven’s ability to blend in with mortals and practice discipline, skills that I had stressed to Stefan would become crucial to their survival.  
Amon bought Hilda and I hot chocolate at the food stand so that we could hold the hot beverages in our hands for the lovely sensation of warmth. He was amazingly in tune with his vampire mate, but I was surprised he had thought of me as well. I was half convinced that Amon hated me. He handed me the steaming cup without a word and merely grunted when I said thanks.  
Stefan joined us and the four of us watched the rest of the coven wrestling in the snow like proud parents. Samuel seemed fascinated by a pretty little Latina girl in particular. He followed her like a puppy dog all night. It was adorable!  
“I think I like her, Stefan,” Samuel told him. “Can she join the coven?”  
Before I could protest, Stefan pelted Samuel with a snowball, saying, “No! Don’t you remember, you idiot? The Council has forbidden us to make more any child vampires!”  
“The Queen of Sheba herself, Alex, has also stated we’re not allowed to make vampires ever again, regardless of whether they are children or not!” Amon added.  
“Oh yeah,” Samuel blushed. “Never mind, then.”  
Amon and Hilda laughed at the younger vampire, but I twitched and said, “Why did you have to bring my name into that?”  
“It’s true, isn’t it? If it were up to you, you’d tell him no. Admit it.”  
“It is, but-“  
“Relax, Alex!” Hilda’s eyes danced. “We’re only teasing! Have some fun with us!”  
She took my hand and asked about skating in the Ribbon. Charlotte walked hastily to join us, struggling not to run as she had been told. We gave our now cold drinks away to other kids that didn’t mind the temperature and skated. Charlotte was a very skilled skater. She could perform tricks and tried to teach me some of them. While she instructed me, Hilda slipped away.  
On our way out of the Ribbon, Samuel tossed a snowball at us. We girls giggled and threw hastily made snowballs back. The entire coven crept from wherever they had been hiding to join in.  
“Get the upstart red-head!” Fritz shouted at the top of his lungs.  
“Wait! No! That’s not fair!” I cried shrilly.  
I wasn’t afraid of injury from the coven. Ironically, I was more worried about the human children eagerly joining in. There’s always one terror in the group that thinks it’s clever and amusing to stuff rocks into their clumps of snow. Stefan rescued me by pulling me behind a wall of snow some other children had made in an attempt to copy the Great Wall of China.  
Taking advantage of the fact that we were out of sight, we kissed until a fledgling began to tear through the ice-powdered wall protecting us. Samuel and some of the more artistic coven members began to build intricate and beautiful snow castles. Human children and their parents stopped in awe to admire their work and take pictures with their phones and cameras.  
We had hours of fun, a truly unforgettable night! Once again, there was no slaughter or drugs involved. The coven simply indulged their inner children whether they were newborn fledglings or old men and women concealing triple digits in age behind youthful faces.  
“Stefan, how long did you and your coven plan to stay in Chicago?” I asked.  
“I hadn’t made plans to stay for any length of time. I took a chance and decided that Lilith would tell me what we should do once we were here.”  
“Well, your coven has been doing very well so far. I’d say I wouldn’t mind them staying permanently if that’s in the cards.”  
“That makes me very happy to hear you say that, Alex, but we would need a home.”  
“I could try to purchase the church and schoolhouse for you,” I offered. “Then you wouldn’t have to squat in an abandoned and crumbling building.”  
Stefan’s eyes widened, “You would do that for us?”  
“I can try.”  
“I thought you didn’t want to be a member of my so called cult.”  
“I may not want to join your cult, but I would like to be part of the family.”  
He kissed me again and sampled a little blood from my throat, promising an exchange later. The park closed at the eleventh hour of the evening, and that was only a few minutes away. He started to gather his flock.  
“Where are Amon and Hilda?” he asked.  
“Around here somewhere, I’m sure,” Charlotte replied. “Where you find one, the other is not far off.”  
“Don’t I know it? Spread out and find them! As soon as we do, we head home!”  
Erupting in laughter, the coven obeyed. I happened to find them fast. They were hiding behind a large pile of snow, exchanging blood and hungry kisses. I fell to my knees in the snow laughing so hard. Hilda broke away from Amon and blushed fiercely while he glowered, clearly not liking to be interrupted and torn from the sensation of his lover.  
“Why that look, Amon?” I teased. “You two are absolutely precious! Nearly five hundred years together and still behaving like teenagers in love! Oh, relationship goals!”  
“I wish this were a rock!” Amon threw snow in my face.  
I dodged and called out to the coven, “Found them! Let’s go!”

“Samuel, I have a question to ask you.”  
Samuel raised his dark eyes from his easel. He had dark skin and hair as well. Stefan had found him on a slave ship and instructed Hilda to make him a vampire then and there. He was another of his self-righteous ‘rescues’. He became a talented painter and had a very cheerful personality. He had no clue what part of Africa he had originally come from. He was young and his village was tiny and remote. Everything had unique names in his native language, but it had been so many years. He had never met another person that spoke anything near to his dialect so that he couldn’t even remember a single word. German might as well have been his mother-tongue.  
“Ja, Mein Dame?”  
“Can you duplicate a painting for me? I am working on getting Stefan ownership of the church and I thought some paintings and icons would liven up the place. This work is called The Crucifixion of Venus. Have you heard of it before?”  
“Es ist australisch?”  
“Yes. It was done by an Australian painter.”  
I handed him a large print out of the painting. He smiled as he admired it and spoke in English.  
“You have good taste. I can do it. Give me a few days.”  
“No rush.”  
“How is the progress on getting the church deed?”  
I sighed with exasperation, “I’m not sure it can be done. There is a lot of resistance. I promised I would give it my best shot. I don’t break my word.”  
“If you can’t, no worries. It would be the will of Lilith. There are so many other churches.”  
“Lilith’s will or not, I don’t like failing.”  
I might be the Guardian of Chicago, but in reality, I had little power in the mortal side of the city. I had been lobbying for the church property for months, but I was not extravagantly rich. There were others lobbying against me to make the church an historic tourist attraction or museum. Others thought it should be torn down to make room for much needed real estate.  
It was true that Vito and Herman had made a considerable fortune during the Prohibition, but that money had been meant for me to take care of myself for a long time. With inflation and rent expenses coupled with bills and food for my ghouls, that fortune was being depleted faster than me or my Maker could have foreseen.  
Gus wasn’t a glamorous or talented politician. He wasn’t a money-making machine either. Maybe my next ghoul would be because politicians were like leeches themselves just asking for ghoulification, especially the corrupt politicians of Chicago!  
“Oh, Charlotte!” I called to her as she walked by. “I have those tickets to the orchestra for you!”  
“Thank you, Alex!” the little vampiress squealed with delight.  
“You should take Fritz with you!”  
“Maybe I will!”  
I found Amon and Hilda in their room at the schoolhouse. Hilda at least pretended to be happy to see me. Amon ignored me.  
“Hilda, I wanted to know if you two would like to double date with Stefan and I tomorrow evening?”  
She said ‘yes’ but Amon said ‘no’ in the same breath. Hilda began to squabble with him.  
“Please, don’t fight!” I cried. “It’s not worth it!”  
“Alex!” Hilda followed after me as I fled. “Don’t mind my husband! It’s not you that bothers him.”  
“Not me?” I stopped in my tracks. “Well then why does it seem like Amon is the only one here that hates me? I’ve reached out to every member of this coven but he won’t come around. Is he angry that I’m not a true believer? Does he resent me because Stefan will only exchange with me now? Does he hate gingers? What is it?”  
“It’s Stefan!”  
“What do you mean? If it’s Stefan, why does it seem like he takes out his antagonism on me?”  
Hilda rolled her eyes, “There is a lot to explain. Let me just say that Amon is worried for you. Stefan isn’t as gallant as my husband is and he can’t stand to watch him court you. No more questions! Don’t bother, I won’t answer them and neither will Amon!”  
She turned away from me and I punched the wall in frustration. That was a mistake. I created a gaping hole where my little fist went clean through. I cursed and called out to the ghouls. At least one of them might have the construction skills necessary to fix it. A man almost stumbled into me. I caught him and looked into his face. He looked sick and far too thin.  
“Thank you!” even those two words of English were broken.  
“When was the last time you ate?”  
“Que?”  
“When was the last time you ate?” I switched to Spanish for him, one of the first languages I had acquired.  
“No se.”  
I groaned and let him fall to the floor. I gathered all of the ghouls together into the church away from their vampire masters. There were no longer thirty of them I realized after I counted. There were two or three missing.  
It was true that some of them wandered the city to beg and fetch drugs or food, but the missing ghouls weren’t responding to the blood summons of their masers. That meant they had either left the city or were incapacitated or dead.  
“When was the last time any of you had a decent meal?” I demanded in every language I had heard spoken amongst them.  
I got different answers, but most couldn’t recall when they had eaten hearty meals. I immediately had Gus deliver sandwiches and pizzas to feed them. I handed out multi-vitamins and over the counter medicines. I searched throughout the church and schoolhouse for caches of food or medicine.  
There was an old refrigerator that wasn’t even installed properly with rotten milk and eggs inside it. There were no other traces of food or water. The vampires wrinkled their noses at the stench of food and looked disgusted at the sight of their ghouls eating. I didn’t care for the smells myself, but I tolerated it.  
“Gus, if I ever neglect you like these vampires do, slap me,” I told him through clenched teeth.  
“Oh, trust me. I will.”  
He took a crunchy bite of food because he knew I couldn’t stand the sound. I covered my ears and let out an exaggerated noise of utter frustration. Stefan entered the church and looked around him in confusion. He motioned to me.  
“Uh oh!” Gus’s eyes popped. “Are you in trouble with your boyfriend?”  
“Trouble is a friend of mine, haven’t you noticed?”  
“Want me to come with you?”  
“Trust me; you couldn’t protect me from Stefan.”  
“No, but I could flip him the bird and distract him while you run.”  
I slugged his shoulder and followed Stefan out into the park. We sat on a bench together to talk.  
“That was a kind thing you did for the ghouls but unnecessary,” he began.  
“Ghouls can’t survive on vampire blood alone. You know that.”  
“No, but they can survive on nothing but it for a very long time. Shouldn’t you know that? You have a ghoul of your own.”  
“I do, but I make sure he eats! Don’t any of you care about your ghouls? Do you care that some of them wander off and die?”  
“They’re tools, not vampires. We take them from the dregs of society. Even your ghoul, whatever his name is-“  
“Gus! His name is Gus! Before him, I had Herman, and I kept him alive longer than perhaps I should have with my blood, but I also fed him soup in a bed I made for him every evening. I made sure he was comfortable and well taken care of! He was not a vampire, he was not family, but he was my ghoul and I will do the same for Gus one day!”  
“They were both addicts you found in some gutter somewhere. We give them our blood and they give us silence and carry out menial tasks. We don’t owe them anything else. They are not children. If they can’t feed themselves, that’s on them. We are, in a sense, eradicating the homeless problem in your city. I would think you and the citizens should be grateful for that.”  
“Ghouls are human beings, Stefan, not tools! Homeless people and addicts are often mentally ill and suffering piss awful luck! Why can’t you show some compassion? Besides, it will grab the attention of police if all the homeless start vanishing at such an alarming rate! How did you and your coven stay so secret all these years if this is how you manage?”  
“We kept to ourselves in cemeteries, sewers, and abandoned properties. We have never owned so much as a studio apartment! It’s only recently that we began using ghouls. The Elder in Germany would drop by on us to make certain we were coping. It was easier to avoid the human world in the old days.”  
“Well, you need to learn and adapt to human ways.”  
“Isn’t that why you are here? To teach me? To keep me on the straight and narrow?”  
“If you are really going to listen to me then the first thing you should do is get that refrigerator running and stock it with food and water. Any food will do, even if it’s nothing but junk, you have to feed them something! If you are going to treat your ghouls like tools, you might as well keep them well maintained. It’s not that hard to feed people. Do you not have the money?”  
“We can scrounge up some.”  
“If you need anything extra, I can help.”  
“We don’t take charity. I have noticed how you treat my followers, Alex. You’ve won over the entire coven.”  
I snickered, “Almost everyone. Amon is like a great big hedge hog with steel spines! How on earth am I going to get him to like me? Is it possible?”  
“He doesn’t even like me and I’m the one that made him.”  
“Fledglings are supposed to hate their Makers. It’s an unwritten rule somewhere.”  
“It is.”  
“Well, Hilda and Amon get along.”  
“They do. Technically Amon made her, but it was at my command. In a way, I’m as much her Maker as he is.”  
“Why didn’t you do it yourself?”  
“We had lost Adela. Vampires aren’t supposed to reproduce quickly. The Council would have us wait five decades. In reality, we don’t need to wait that long, but I made Adela within five minutes of making Amon. Remember, I didn’t know better. She barely survived the transformation. The next child I attempted to make was not so lucky. I realized it took too much out of the Maker and fledgling to attempt multiple ‘births’. As a result of my ignorance, Adela was never as strong as Amon and I. She didn’t survive the passage of time. We were both devastated by her death.”  
“I’m sorry. I guess that explains why Amon is so grim. He must have loved his sister if it affects him so much to this day.”  
“He did love her. That’s why when we stumbled on Hilda in a German nunnery we were both smitten. She was so much like Adela, it seemed as though Lilith herself was telling us to take her with us. Amon hadn’t made another vampire yet but I had made too many in too short a time. As much as he wanted her, he was hesitant to turn her. I threatened to kill her if he didn’t, so he did it. Now they’re the sweetest and oldest couple you’ll ever find.”  
“You threatened to murder her?” I was aghast.  
“I only said it to stir him to action. Amon has always needed me to give him the push he needed.”  
“You’re like a wicked devil on his shoulder urging him to do all the wrong things?” I joked.  
“I never urge anyone to do something they don’t already want to do deep in their souls,” Stefan became serious again after that comment. “I appreciate what you’ve done for the coven even if you don’t consider yourself part of the flock. That makes your efforts more remarkable. It’s touching that you care for your own kind as well as humans and ghouls. You have given me a lot to think about since we arrived. Thank you.”  
He was being a charmer again. I kissed him and we returned to the church holding hands. I made a face at Gus as we passed by him.  
“You can go home now,” I instructed him.  
“You are not coming?”  
“I’m staying tonight.”  
“Fine, I guess.”

The next evening, I awoke nestled in Stefan’s sleeping bag with his arms around me. He was always warm because he kept himself well-fed. Unlike me, he never neglected blood meals. That made him more irresistible. Vampires don’t get fazed by the cold like humans, but we love warmth. I could still taste his blood in my mouth when Samuel slipped into the room. He was trying to be stealthy, but that was impossible. I turned my head and greeted him.  
“Sorry,” Samuel reeked of awkwardness. “I brought the painting for you. It’s finished.”  
“Oh, thank you, Sam! Bring it here!”  
I rose from the sleeping bag to show him I was still fully clothed and so was Stefan. I didn’t want Samuel to go running his mouth spreading lies about what he saw. Sexual activity was a human habit and that made Stefan ridicule the idea more than I did. All that we had done was exchange blood and cuddle and fall asleep. That was how vampires properly expressed intimacy and that was perfect for us. Samuel gave me the painting and left the room, still sheepish.  
I happened to be tracing my fingers along the woman’s curves in the painting when Stefan woke and wrapped himself around me again. His voice was husky in my ear.  
“What are you thinking about?”  
I blushed, “Nothing.”  
“You can’t hide anything from me. You wish you looked like that?”  
“Maybe.”  
“You’re perfect the way you are.”  
He gave me a sweet little kiss and began to admire the painting himself.  
“What do you think of it?” I asked him.  
“It’s beautiful. I love the idea of a gender reversed Christ-figure. It’s very appropriate in a church dedicated to Lilith and Cain. I always felt that Christianity lacked a feminine deity. The Virgin Mary is not quite the same as Lilith.”  
“No,” I agreed. “That’s why I was attracted to Wicca when the Neo-Pagan and New Age movements started up decades ago. People were actually discussing a Great Goddess. Vito would have loved it all! It’s a real shame he couldn’t be around to witness this great revival in Occultism. I read Gardner’s books on the Craft and dabbled in some of its rituals and ideas. They were enjoyable but I couldn’t make myself believe.”  
Stefan took my hand, “I think it’s time I showed you something.”  
Intrigued, I let him lead me back into the church. He fetched something he had hidden out of sight in the darker corners. He laid a tablet and a piece of a fresco wall on the podium and bade me look at them. I knew he expected me to light up as soon as I saw them, but if I had a living heart, it would have sunk into my feet.  
The tablet had Cyrillic writing and the fresco painting was done in a style I recognized all too well. My Maker had painted and drawn so many sketches of me when he was still around. This was yet another reimaging of me designed to look far older than it was and done in an iconographic style. I couldn’t help but start to cackle.  
“What in the hell is so funny?” Stefan sounded livid.  
My ribs were hurting so badly from laughing so hard that I couldn’t answer right away. Stefan’s anger soared with every laugh.  
“Stefan, is this some sort of joke?” I finally managed to breathe. “Where did you get these?”  
“That doesn’t matter. I am trying to reveal something to you! I am trying to prove to you that your Maker was right about you, Alex. You are Lilith!”  
I was crying blood tears from my bitter amusement. I was so glad that none of his followers were in the church at the moment to compound his humiliation. I couldn’t help myself.  
“Stefan, Stefan, Stefan! I hate to break this to you: These are fakes!”  
“No! That’s not possible!”  
“I know they are fakes! Furthermore, I know exactly who faked them, how they faked them, why they faked them, and who helped him to fake them! My Maker Vito forged these and created that image of me. I was there when he gave that Cyrillic tablet to his associates! I’m sorry, Stefan, but you have been deceived! If my Maker were here, I’d make him apologize and explain. I have to do it for him.”  
“Get out!” Stefan hissed dangerously.  
I knew better than to keep provoking him. Truth be told, I was a little terrified. I had challenged Stefan boldly and gotten away with it for a long time. We had fundamental disagreements about philosophy and spirituality, and every time we somehow made up for it and ended up exchanging blood passionately. I had never burst out laughing so boorishly. Perhaps I deserved a good smack in the teeth for my poor reaction.  
I realized I might have irreparably damaged our relationship. What was I supposed to do, though? Should I have let him believe his precious artifacts were real and that I was a vampire goddess?  
“That’s exactly what you should have done!” Gus screamed at me as he drove me away.  
“Really? I should have lied? I should have embraced a lie?”  
“If you had gone along with it, do you have any idea how much power that would have given you, Alex? Stefan already worships you! Think of how he would treat you if you told him you were divine!”  
“That is the most disgusting thing I have ever heard you suggest and you forced me to sit down and watch Hostel with you!!”  
“You better hope your boyfriend forgives you and still likes you even though you’re not the goddess he thought you were! He could unleash his whole coven on you and the city!”  
“Fuck!” I held my face in my hands as what he said sank in. “FUCK!”  
“God, Alex, you don’t think, do you? You never think. One hundred and ten years old, my ass! You still act like you are ten! I should be the vampire and you should be the ghoul!”  
“Fuck you, Gus! Take me back!”  
“If I take you back there, will he rip your face off?”  
“I don’t know! Damn it! Does this mean he only loved me because he thought I was Lilith? That’s why he came here all the way from Germany, dragging his cult with him! That’s why his ghoul took pictures of me! He had that image already!” I clutched my vial. “Vito, if you were here, I’d kill you! This is all your fault!”  
I was terrified to confront or apologize to Stefan. I made Gus stay in the room with me when I slept, and that was very little. There was nothing to prevent Stefan or any other vampire from breaking into my home. Garlic, crucifixes, rice or blood offerings, nothing but a great show of force would work to keep them out. I woke dozens of times expecting to see Stefan’s pale blue eyes glowing in the dark before he endeavored to slaughter me.  
I thought about attempting to contact Senenmut or Vladimir and Mishka. It would be humiliating to beg for help from the Council and I knew already they would never send me aid without good reason. Other than some heretical pipe dream that I was Lilith, Stefan and his coven had committed no crimes yet.  
My Russian friends would certainly come to my rescue, but I had no idea where on the globe they were, how long my message would take to get to them, and how long it would take for them to get to Chicago. Vampires couldn’t fly, directly manipulate minds, or teleport like they do in movies and comic books.  
I gazed at Gus. He had fallen asleep on the armchair next to my bed. Some ghoul he was! He had made good points, though. Maybe I could salvage something between Stefan and me. Maybe it was time I adopted some qualities of the deity he associated with me. Would he really harm his Lilith?  
“Gus!” I shook him awake. “I need you to take me back to the park in front of the church.”  
“What are you planning to do?”  
“I will wait for Stefan to meet me there and we will talk.”  
“Alex, are you sure that’s not going to get you killed?”  
“There’s no guarantee of anything. Stefan might refuse to come out and meet me, but he’ll feel my presence. There are usually human witnesses so it would be stupid of him to harm me out in the open. It’s neutral ground. I want you to drop me off and drive away.”  
“You better patch things up with him and not piss him off. I don’t want to become one of those zombie-like ghouls the coven vampires keep. You know that if anything happens to you that would be my only option, right?”  
“You are the least of my worries, but come here. I’ll give you a last bit of my blood just in case.”  
I waited patiently in the park with head bowed. It seemed like I had waited an eon. I could feel the presence of the entire coven in the church and in the schoolhouse but none of them came to greet me and no ghoul came out to bring me a message. It was near dawn before Stefan finally came out to meet me. I swallowed hard and felt the prickly sensation of the first rays of sun. Stefan winced too.  
“What took you so long?” I said with levity in my voice. “Do you want us to melt in the sun?”  
He was silent as the grave.  
“Look, I was being a big horse’s ass. I shouldn’t have laughed like I did. I’m not as old and mature as you are, Stefan. I’m still young and stupid. That’s why it’s a little hard to believe that you think I could possibly be Lilith.”  
He didn’t respond.  
“Can we please go indoors somewhere? I don’t know about you, but I’m still quite allergic to sunlight.”  
He motioned for me to follow him into the church. I hated the fact that he had used the sunlight to force me back into his lair. I was now without the protection of humans. I could have run for shelter all around me, I suppose, but Stefan was no longer giving me murderous vibes. I followed him.  
We were the only ones in the church. The rest of the coven had gone into the school house to rest during the day. I saw that the podium was empty.  
“What did you do with the relics? Did you destroy them?” I asked.  
“Why should you care? They were hoaxes.”  
“If you send them to the Council, they will reward you. My Maker managed to smuggle real relics out into the world among the fakes. Even the fakes can still do much to expose us as a race. Smash them, hang them on the walls as art, whatever you want. My advice is given in your best interest.”  
“You are looking out for our best interest?” Stefan said mockingly. “Still?”  
“You think I would suddenly stop caring for you and the others here after all these months getting to know each person on a selfish whim?” I was actually insulted. “Unlike you, I don’t need divine inspiration or superstitious threats of punishment to be decent to humans or vampires or ghouls. I don’t require worship either.”  
“Why are you always so maddeningly generous and optimistic?”  
“Why are you so bitter and cynical? Oh wait, I guess it must be the age gap between us: The centuries, not decades or years!”  
“I will send the Cyrillic tablet to the Council,” Stefan announced. “But I will keep the fresco. I will hang it up in this church with The Crucifixion of Venus. It is either that or you should keep it.”  
“Me? Keep it? Why?”  
“Because Vito made it and it is your image.”  
My eyes shimmered with blood, “That’s kind of you.”  
“I can be very kind just as you can be very shrewd and wise when you aren’t showing utter contempt and disregard for the beliefs of others.”  
“I deserve that. However, I must ask you some hard questions about those beliefs.”  
“Ask away.”  
“What makes you think I am Lilith? Is that all that you care about?”  
He took my hand and gazed unblinkingly into my eyes as he answered, “I must admit that the idea that you could be Lilith was what attracted my initial interest. Your Maker is not the only vampire that has sought her out as more than just an idea. We were kindred spirits he and I. I am a true believer. Jesus and the saints failed me but we exist. I was convinced from the beginning that Lilith must exist as well. If she was real, Cain must be too. The Council teaches us that both must return from the Primordial Garden some day to reign in and guide mankind. I personally believe that humans are long overdue for destruction, but it won’t be at our hands. They will unleash Armageddon on themselves! It is our kind that will have to pick up the pieces for them.”  
“Sounds to me like you based your faith on lies if you relied on those fake relics,” I blurted.  
“Those relics are fakes. If you say so, they must be. I should have found better experts to verify their true age. I cannot be angry at you for telling me the truth, Alex. Lilith would tell me nothing but the truth. The image of you helped me to find you, but it’s not the only thing that convinced me.”  
“What on earth did the Cyrillic tablet say? I never actually saw it when Vito traded it to his associates. Vito only told me about the writing itself.”  
“It was a prophesy that does, in fact, exist in the Library of Lilith. I have read it before in a scroll in another language and from another time and country of origin. The tablet was made to plant evidence in Russia or the Ukraine for mortal archeologists to discover and chatter about. Vito’s goal was to proselytize our sacred religion through whatever means necessary. I see that now. It said that Lilith would appear as a pure vampire and that once she found her Cain, also purified, an age of vampires would come.”  
“What does a ‘pure vampire’ mean?”  
“That is what the priests and priestesses debate about to this day. I always interpreted it to mean that they would be just that: Pure! They would have less of the trappings of humanity and truly embody Lilith and Cain. Wisdom wed to Power, Blood wed to Flesh, and Forever Young.”  
“So child vampires?”  
“Exactly.”  
“Other than the obvious fact that I am a child vampire, what does any of this have to do with me? Hilda is a child vampire. All of your followers are! Why am I getting the honor of being named Lilith?”  
“You have the elusive red hair. In our literature and vampire legends among mortals red hair has always been associated with vampires and especially Lilith. You have prehistoric blood in your veins. I know exactly who your Grand-Maker is. He is famously ancient and knowledgeable. You have achieved much more than any child vampire ever has in a short period. Are you aware of what a prodigy you are?”  
“Prodigy? I’m an idiot that can barely get out of bed without stumbling over my own feet! I need my ghouls to keep track of my finances! I have almost gotten myself killed on more than one occasion!”  
“You are a Guardian! There has never been a child Guardian in the history of our race! You can speak and write in many languages! I’ve seen you instructing the younger members how to speak American English. You have a great gift and don’t even know it!”  
“It’s my only talent and it was acquired with dedicated study and practice over decades!”  
“It’s so frustrating that you have so little faith in yourself, Alex! This is why you have no faith in anything spiritual!”  
“I suppose you may be right about that,” I muttered.  
“Vito believed in you.”  
“Vito believed almost everything!”  
“You also have a quality that Lilith had but Cain lacked: Compassion tempered with wisdom. Remember that wisdom and knowledge is not the same thing. Knowledge is acquiring skills and techniques and wisdom is the knowing how to utilize them. I lack knowledge of the human world and am out of touch despite my age. You are younger and have been forced to deal with mortals. I have the power and knowledge that comes with time. It is not enough.”  
“So you have decided that you are Cain?” I shouldn’t have been surprised at that narcissism. “And when did you discover that about yourself?”  
“The Buddha and Mohammed didn’t know they were born to be prophets. Not even Jesus was born knowing he was the Son of God. He couldn’t have known until later in life. Scholars debate about when he became self-aware thousands and thousands of years after he walked the earth. Some said it was at his baptism when he was in his thirties. Others insist it was when he was twelve years old and visited the temple in Jerusalem. I firmly believe that if he existed, it was at that tender age. I always had a sense of divine purpose. My desire to become a living saint was misplaced. I was meant to be a vampire. I was meant to become self-aware as Cain.”  
It took every ounce of control not to roll my eyes at his fervent declaration. I was not convinced by his arguments one bit. I wanted to dismantle everything he said. I wanted to carefully explain to Stefan what a delusional fool he was but I stopped myself. I knew I had to tread very carefully.  
“Do you love me? Alex, not the Lilith you want to see in me?” my question became much more personal than theological.  
He said very slowly, “Alexandria, I do love you. That is the most important reason that I believe in you.”  
I stopped breathing. Those words were far more powerful and persuasive than anything he had said before. They were the words I had desperately wanted to hear but didn’t know it until he said it. They disarmed my logic and reason. I felt his blood calling to me again and resisted the urge. The sun was climbing into the sky outside and was affecting both of us internally even though every window and door was carefully covered.  
“We must continue this discussion when night returns,” I told him. “I need to sleep on all this. It’s a lot to be something I’m not.”  
Stefan nodded. He didn’t expect me to join him in his sleeping bag. I went to Fritz’s room where he lay with Charlotte so that there were duplicate spares of bedding. They were fast asleep and didn’t hear or see me as I slipped inside and went to sleep, silently sending a message on my cell phone to Gus that I was, in fact, alive and well for now so that he wouldn’t worry.  
When darkness crept back into Chicago, I rose and went to the bowling alley of the schoolhouse. The elder vampires rose sooner than the younger ones. Stefan must have slipped into the church already. Amon and Hilda, Samuel and several others were composing or painting or messing around with the pins and bowling balls. Hilda was friendly as usual.  
“You are back!” she said cheerfully. “Samuel said you spent the morning before with Stefan. Not so this morning?”  
“No.”  
“Did you two fight?” Amon asked gleefully.  
“Not a fight. We just had a disagreement.”  
“No one has ever disagreed with him so much before!” Amon actually sounded a bit proud of me. “What did you disagree about? That painting of yours that Samuel made?”  
“No he, uh, actually tried to convince me that I am Lilith.”  
Amon threw his stack of musical papers in the air and stormed out of the alley immediately while the rest of the vampires became very still and silent. I hadn’t meant to cause a scene. I thought for sure the coven knew Stefan’s assumptions about me before I did. Hilda grimaced and rose to her feet and shooed away the others before she sat down with me again, folding her arms into her lap.  
“Amon-“  
“Is not angry at me. I know.”  
“He was dreading this.”  
“Why?”  
“He was expecting Stefan to do this. He hoped that he wouldn’t. “  
“What do you think, Hilda? What do the others think of me and of Stefan? Please be honest.”  
“You? I think that you are sweet, Alex. You have shown your true colors, and they are bright and warm. Do I think that you are Lilith?” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “No. The bulk of the coven believes whatever Stefan does. Most, especially Fritz, never question him about anything. They are devoted heart and soul to Stefan. Amon and I used to be just as devoted. We have been with him far longer, but we have begun to question his actions for many years now. There are a few others that have doubts. It’s a handful, not the majority. Now what do you believe?”  
“I don’t know!”  
“Let me make the questions simpler then: Do you believe that you are Lilith incarnate?”  
“No!”  
“That wasn’t so hard. Do you believe that Stefan is Cain?”  
“I don’t think so.”  
“Do you love him?”  
I couldn’t answer that one. Hilda groaned and wrung her hands. She looked as though she desperately wanted to say something but she didn’t.  
“And what would they all do if I refused to play along with this? What would Stefan do if I refused to be his Lilith?”  
“Well that would certainly be interesting. No one has ever refused Stefan before.”  
“I guess the better question is what harm is there in agreeing with him or remaining undecided? What exactly does he expect from me if I pretend to be Lilith?”  
“He would expect you to help him lead this coven and be his partner.”  
“That’s not terribly different from what is going on right now.”  
Once again, Hilda was about to say something but stopped as soon as we felt Stefan’s presence nearby. Her mouth closed. I knew he had come for me. I rose to join him and he led me up to the bell tower.  
The open air was humid and filled with the noise of constant traffic and the buzzing of electricity and insects. We gazed down at the park below and the waxing moon above us. The city was too bright to see stars.  
“It’s a shame about all this air and light pollution,” Stefan said. “Berlin wasn’t much better than this. Sometimes I wish you were not a Guardian and we could all move away to some remote little town or village. Is there still such a thing as a village in this country?”  
“Of course there is! Name it and you will probably find it somewhere in America.”  
“I want less human noise.”  
“Your wish is granted!”  
I giggled and tolled the bell. Its hideous clanging filled our ears and vibrated through our bodies. Stefan’s eyes were glowing and I knew mine must be too. He laughed with me for a glorious moment. That was encouraging.  
I realized that making him laugh and smile with joy must be a difficult thing to do. I had caught many of his memories through his blood now but I knew I had only just scratched the surface. In five hundred years would I be laughing as easily as he did? Would I ever reach such an astounding age?  
When the clanging stopped, Stefan frowned, “There was a time when the sound of church bells was one of the most beautiful things to me.”  
“I prefer the voices of your coven. No one can deny that they are talented and any deity would be pleased.”  
“Would Lilith approve?” he pressed into me.  
“She might,” I stroked his auburn hair. “I don’t know if she dwells in me, Stefan. Does it really matter?”  
“Does it matter to you if I am Cain or not?”  
“Just as long as you are my Cain I will be Lilith for you,” the words poured out of me.  
Stefan looked so happy I hesitated to kiss him. I wanted to remember his face. He was far more impetuous than me. He kissed me hard and there was soon blood rushing into both of our mouths. 

Stefan wanted me to accept my role as Lilith and Priestess as well as Mother of his coven. I accepted with a vague understanding of what that required. I was already a Priestess according to the Council. I had proven I knew the required rituals, prayers, and meditation techniques. I had practiced blood discipline and recited the commandments and tenants. His coven had unique rituals and requirements.  
That was why I was surprised that he insisted I must be baptized. Baptism was not one of the standard practices. I had imagined something mundanely similar to the Christian baptism I had undergone as an oblivious infant. My mother had made certain a priest was there to baptize me as soon as I came out of the womb. She had lost too many little souls before to risk waiting a moment longer.  
“A Christian baptism will not do. It must be a vampire baptism.”  
“Is this something everyone in the coven experiences or is it because I am Lilith?”  
“It is for everyone.”  
“What is different?”  
“We use a substitute for holy water and invoke Cain and Lilith. There is not too much else different.”  
“Wait, so you and I will be invoking ourselves?”  
“Tantalizing, isn’t it?”  
“I suppose religion is never supposed to make any sort of sense!”  
He wanted to wait for a blood moon for my baptism but that was impractical because even though there was a blood moon expected that July, I knew it wouldn’t be visible from anywhere in America and especially in Chicago. A regular full moon would have to suffice unless he was patient enough to wait. Of course, he wasn’t and refused to wait for more than a few weeks. It was only April so that the blood moon was months away.  
During those days, it seemed that most of the coven was delighted that I was accepting of their beliefs and of being their Lilith. It reconfirmed Stefan’s status as Cain to their minds. Fritz would fawn on us and the other members treated the pair of us like royalty or true gods. Stefan had already seemed that way to them but I was not used to such treatment. Hilda was the only one that treated us the same. Amon seethed with resentment toward, I suspected, both Stefan and I. He must not have expected me to accept.  
“Is Amon going to be a problem?” Stefan growled to Hilda when her husband was out of ear shot.  
“He will come around,” she promised. “You know how he gets.”  
“I don’t want ten years of nothing but silence from him!”  
“I will speak with him.”  
“Ten years?” I glanced sideways at Stefan.  
“That’s nothing. He would barely speak to me for almost fifty years once upon a time!”  
I lived with the coven, sleeping with Stefan in his room and his arms contentedly. I was happy to report to him that I was almost certain we would have the title to the property soon. Hopefully we could start restoring and repairing the church and schoolhouse. I wanted a proper bed to sleep in.  
I didn’t expect Gus to loiter among the other ghouls so I gave him blood every night so that I could summon him from wherever he was in the city if I needed him. I had to partake of more frequent blood meals as a result. Stefan seemed pleased by that. I was always warm to the touch and needed less paint to appear human.  
When the evening of the baptism came, Stefan shooed me away to meditate in the schoolhouse while he and his followers prepared the church. He also handed me a white robe to wear instead of the usual red robes of Lilith and Cain. I was mind-numbingly bored by the time they came to collect me.  
The entire church was lit with red candles. There was the scent of myrrh in the air. The painting of The Crucified Venus was hung up on the walls. They had filled an antique tub full to the brim with red liquid. When I saw that, I stopped and shot Stefan a wild and confused look. I had been instructed not to speak during the ceremony but he had not warned me about what had been used to substitute the holy water. I couldn’t mistake the smell of blood. I just couldn’t tell whose blood it was!  
I hesitated for a moment before diving into the blood-water. This means nothing unless I believe it does, right? While under the water and trying not to ingest any of the blood, I heard Stefan declaring me Lilith reborn. I felt nothing at that. There was no change in me from the inside or the outside. When I rose out of the tub, I was drenched and my robes now the proper red because of all the blood. Each coven member touched me as though I were a sacred and living statue. Amon brushed his hand over me and his eyes were sad instead of angry. Hilda made no sign at all.  
The coven left the church in a solemn single file, the ceremony presumably over. Stefan touched me with reverence, but somehow, I didn’t feel remotely reverent. Blood dripped from my matted hair and fingers and the skirts of my robes. I was beginning to feel sticky instead of just wet. I couldn’t believe that the smell and feel of the blood on my skin was actually making me queasy. How ironic for a vampire to have that sort of reaction!  
“Whose blood is this?” I demanded.  
“Human.”  
“Human or humans?”  
“There is a lot of blood in a full grown man but not enough to fill an entire tub. You do the math, Lilith.”  
“The blood-“  
“I will take care of it. Would you like me to take the blood off you as well?”  
He was enjoying this in some perverse way. He had not shown me this side of him since the night we hunted when we were high and possessed by blood lust. He was not high now and it had been a while since his last meal.  
He leaned forward and I backed away, saying, “I need to meditate. I expected some sort of vision or sign while I was engulfed in all that blood. I have experienced nothing.”  
“Nothing?” he sounded disappointed.  
“Did you feel something when you were baptized? Did Amon and the others? Was I supposed to?”  
“I thought I saw a weeping lamb and a primordial hunter carrying it that I assumed must be Cain. You must ask the others what they saw.”  
“I’ll clean myself up. I’ll join you in bed later.”  
After I washed the blood away from my body and changed back into regular clothes, I remained in the church. I was in no hurry to rejoin Stefan. The tub had been drained and removed by the ghouls and they began replacing the candles with normal waxed candles.  
Upon closer inspection of the red candles, I suspected that they were dyed red with the blood of vampires, most likely given as offerings by the coven members. The candles were stained with such a dark red that they were almost black and smelled of blood faintly. I clutched Vito’s vial and wondered what he would have thought of my unholy baptism and Stefan’s insistence about who I was and what our purpose was.  
“Would you approve?” I whispered aloud. “Would you have agreed with Stefan and called him son and father as you called me daughter and mother?”  
I remembered that Vito had appeared in my dream, teasing me about Stefan. He said he wanted me to be happy, even if that happiness was temporary. That gave me another horrible thought. What if all of this was temporary? Did he mean that in a philosophical way because everything was supposedly temporary and that everything was made to be broken? Had he been trying to warn me about something or was he just trying to push me toward my Cain?  
In that moment, I didn’t want a revelation from Lilith or Cain or anything divine. I merely wanted Vito to explain himself.  
I was startled when Amon entered with Hilda walking so closely it seemed as though an invisible tether was connecting them. They had never looked so serious before. Their eyes glowed green and orange in the dark. They glared at the ghouls until all had left the church and the three of us were alone. I waited for them to speak. I could tell they were trying to detect any sign of us being spied upon.  
From what I could sense, dawn was not far and most of the coven were preparing for sleep. Stefan had gone out to hunt since I refused to exchange blood. Any ghouls that had jobs or families were gone and any left remained slavishly at their vampire’s side in the school house. As ghouls, their sense of hearing was boosted whenever there was vampire blood in their system, but that sense was weak compared to an actual vampires’.  
“Hail, Lilith!” Amon said bitterly. “You know, I thought you were smarter than the others.”  
“The others? What others?”  
Amon laughed and Hilda shed a blood tear. She squeezed her husband’s hand. She was usually the poised and controlled one but she seemed to be trembling with incensed emotion. Amon was the hushed and poignant partner. Their role reversals threw me off.  
“You are not the first Lilith Stefan has had!” Amon stated. “At least once or twice a century, he has hunted down a human child and convinced himself that she was Lilith. There is not a single vampiress in this coven that he did not, at one time or another, try to seduce and deify! He did it first to my sister and then to Hilda! It’s a vicious cycle that never ends! He becomes disenchanted with his new Lilith within a few decades and discards her! You are just his newest and most attractive Lilith of the new millennium!”  
Hilda gazed at me with pity in her eyes as I let Amon’s words sink in. It was like a cold wave of ocean water had crashed over me. Next I felt physically ill and wounded. I began trembling just like Hilda. It was as though some hungry ghost had reached its hand through my body to squeeze my lifeless heart over and over.  
Even as Hilda threw her arms around me, though, it seemed as if my blood erupted in flame to ward off the ghost of despair. Anger was always an easy emotion to provoke from me after incredible gloom and pain. It had been a survival instinct for me. I was grateful for Hilda’s sympathy and let her try to comfort me.  
“He told me that Adela perished. He told me that you were the one that turned Hilda and wanted her more. He never said anything about other Liliths. I have exchanged blood with him countless times now. He showed me so many images and snap shots of his eight centuries on this earth. Why wouldn’t I discern anything like this? Why wouldn’t he tell me?”  
“He told you and showed you only what he wanted you to see and know, Alex! It is exactly as before. What did he tell you about my sister and Hilda? I want to hear those lies in particular!”  
“He told me that Adela was too weak from being made too soon after you. He made it sound like she simply couldn’t survive. He said he loved her and so did you. You were both with him from the very beginning, his most loyal and trusted friends and followers. He said he was devastated by her death.”  
Amon snickered, “Of course he left out the most important details. He murdered her, Alex!”  
The ghost was at my heart again, “Tell me what really happened. Please. I want every detail!”  
“My sister was a sweet and innocent little thing,” Amon’s eyes were full of pain. “When Stefan and I abandoned our monastery, I begged him to go through my old village just so that I could fetch her. Unlike Stefan, I hated my life in the monastery! I was dragged from my sister kicking and screaming! I was a lazy and disinterested student. I loved and feared God, no one alive in that era could not, but I nursed doubt in my heart. The monks and priests could detect that as though I reeked of it! They beat me constantly! They were thinking of cutting me and making me a eunuch because my only value to them was my singing voice! I wanted to go home to my sister every day! She followed us all the way to Jerusalem just so that she could be by her big brother’s side!”  
“Why did Stefan kill her?”  
“She was his first Lilith. He began courting her and treated her so well that I didn’t protest. He was our Maker and friend. He was my brother and father. We were as happy as three orphaned vampire children could be for a while. That ended when Stefan grew tired of Adela. He started to complain that my sister was letting the idea of being Lilith go to her head. She saw miracles and signs everywhere, but Stefan never believed in anyone’s revelations but his own.  
“Did she have visions?” I asked.  
“I don’t really know, Alex. I suspected she was reading into things that were never there. What seems like the more sane and rational explanation to you?”  
“She wanted to believe it whether it was true or not.”  
“That is a shockingly precise statement. Stefan and Adela’s romance faded away but she wouldn’t allow herself to be comforted. She had not only her lover stripped from her, but her identity. If she was not Lilith then her faith was a lie! She became unhinged and desperate to win Stefan back. It became too much of an inconvenience and annoyance to him. He had started up the coven by then and had duties and a reputation to protect. I was too stupid then to realize it, but he painted Adela into a crazy, fragile vampiress beyond all saving. The coven put it to a vote. She was labeled a danger to the coven and to the race. She had to be executed.”  
“Did they burn her?”  
“They buried her alive. I could do nothing as they murdered my sister at our Maker’s command. The whole affair almost made me mad, but Stefan knew how to manipulate people. He always had. He took me to a nunnery and pointed out Hilda to me.”  
She looked up at her name but remained quiet and still. She was content to allow Amon to continue the story.  
“Stefan told me that she was like your sister’s twin,” I said. “He had made too many vampires and you had to make her. He threatened to kill her if you didn’t. Was there more to it than that? He claimed his threat was only a bluff!”  
“It was no bluff! He drained her to the point of death so I had no other choice! She would have died within seconds if I hadn’t given her my blood! He always orders his followers to do the dirty work of reproducing. It ensures that they will each of them be weaker than the last. The blood of his ancient maker is diluted amongst all of the vampires but me. It guarantees that he will always remain far stronger than his flock so they have less chance to turn against him! That and he could implicate the entire coven in the crime of making child vampires. He turned Fritz because he had no time to fetch another to do it for him. The only truth to his story was that I indeed wanted Hilda more than him. He declared her Lilith and took her for his lover and then discarded her too!”  
Finally Hilda spoke, her voice quivering, “It was like he built me up and put me on this pedestal and then threw me down to shatter on the floor. I would have rather he flayed me alive. I was happy in that nunnery. I had the prettiest voice in all of Germany, a true gift from God. I wanted for nothing. I had strong faith. Then along came these vampire brothers like Cain and Abel in the vampire myths. I fell for the wrong one. I paid dearly for that. Then again, Amon didn’t try to seduce me. He treated me like a sister of the flesh and of the blood until after Stefan nearly destroyed me. Oh, I didn’t try to win him back and insist I was Lilith like Adela. I tried to expose myself to the sunlight until it killed me. Amon saved me.”  
She flashed her husband a smile. He sighed.  
“We had to watch him do this over and over again,” Amon continued. “Eventually he would realize whatever girl he chose was only ordinary. He was not awakening into a god either. He blamed that on the prophecy. He couldn’t become Cain until after he discovered his true Lilith. He became more selective and careful with how he chose a new vampiress and handled the break after, but it continued! I re-examined the circumstances of my sister’s death and realized Stefan had essentially murdered her. I vowed this would never happen again. Then you showed up.”  
“Why didn’t you stop him? What makes me so different?”  
“We wanted to cling to our faith. We wanted to believe Stefan’s lies. We wanted to remain part of the coven and our family. Every other vampiress he made was hopelessly twisted and manipulated. Even if Hilda and I had warned them, they would have fallen into his traps. I hate that vampire. I really and truly hate him! I’ve been patiently biding my time.”  
“You are different, Alex,” Hilda explained, “Because for once, Stefan didn’t go looking for you and turn you from the time you were human. You were here all along! Someone that had nothing to do with Stefan created you and believed you were Lilith. There were artifacts and rumors that we investigated. It was as though you were calling to him across waters and time and not him simply projecting onto the nearest and prettiest girl! You are not of our blood. You are practically a member of the Council yourself. If anything happens to you, Stefan will pay for it. Your Grand-Maker will see to that. In a way, Stefan is getting reckless and sloppy. It’s exactly the opportunity that we have been waiting for! It also convinced Stefan all the more that maybe this time he has finally found his Lilith.”  
“What should I do?”  
“What you have done so well already since we came here: Challenge him! Stand up to him! Call him out on all his bullshit! Don’t be afraid of him! Remind him who you are and who will avenge you if he dares to try anything!”  
“Amon, Hilda, you forget that he is more powerful than I am. I have this city to protect. Part of the reason I went along with this baptism was for fear he would harm the mortals of my city. He could strike terrible blows to Chicago, wound me or even kill me, and gather you all and flee to Germany. He could escape punishment for a long time.”  
“Try to confront him with words like you usually do then. It might not work, but if he harms you, I will be here for you!” Amon promised. “I am nearly as strong as he is. He should think twice before he fights me! Try to avoid exchanging blood with him in the meantime. If I harm Stefan, the entire coven feels it and so would you. If he harms me, the entire coven will feel it as well. I’m not looking forward to it, but it can’t be helped.”  
“You could be killed, Amon!”  
“Hilda and I have already discussed and planned for that possibility,” he said with resignation. “We could try something more subtle, but that would risk the entire coven. Use your influence and tell us what comes of it. We will go from there.”

They left me alone to face Stefan when he returned, but not far. I waited a long time before I realized that he was not coming back into the church. He had gone to bed or was doing something else and I needed to know what that was immediately. There were several vehicles parked in front of the church and many ghouls carrying objects that I couldn’t see into the school house. When I went to investigate, I realized that they were leading crying human children within the building and the vampires were being displaced into the church.  
“What is this?” I demanded. “What are these human children doing here? Where are their parents?”  
“Stefan’s orders,” one of the ghouls responded.  
Gone was my desire to confront Stefan about his past. This required immediate action. I could sense his presence. He was coming down the street with his own prize. He had snatched a child and greeted me with a smug smile.  
“Say hello to your Mickey,” he said.  
“Mickey?”  
I looked into the child’s face and was horrified to recognize Mike and shouted! “I should have never shown you my family!”  
“They are not your family, Alex, at least not yet. I have decided that it is time to increase our numbers. You have never made a fledgling. When the blood moon is in the sky, we’ll all turn a child. Every ten years we will double our numbers!”  
“In the name of God, why?” I thundered.  
“So that neither humans nor the Council vampires can touch us!”  
“You think the Council will idly stand by while you blatantly rebel against the law? Don’t you care about this coven?”  
I could hear and see the coven that I mentioned gathering around us as I hollered my throat raw and Stefan gazed back at me expressionless. I could feel their unease and confusion. Lilith and Cain should not be divided like this. It was unwise of me to challenge Stefan publicly as I was. Fritz in particular was furrowing his brow in unabashed fury, his most loyal little creature. Hilda and Amon looked angry as well, but I knew that was for entirely different reasons.  
“You are not going to report this to the Council, though, are you?” Stefan challenged me.  
“You know I wouldn’t do that!”  
What I said was true. The Council would swoop in and possibly kill everyone involved in this including the human children even if Stefan didn’t kill them first. My answer seemed to please him greatly and calm washed over the coven.  
“Please, Stefan,” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Let’s discuss this privately.”  
“No, say whatever it is you want to say in front of the coven.”  
I cursed under my breath, “Fine. I just want you to think about this rationally. I wish you had discussed this with me before. You can’t just abduct thirty children in a city like this without some sort of reaction!”  
“I have only snatched a few tonight. More will come later. We are being careful not to be seen. Until we’ve collected them all, the children will remain well taken care of and guarded in the schoolhouse.”  
“What if the police come looking for them?”  
“We can always listen in on the police and move the children.”  
“Move them where when there are thirty of them?”  
“It’s a big city. There are plenty of places.”  
A ghoul led Mike away but I couldn’t help myself. I followed after them. I imagined that his parents would be hysterical when they woke in the morning to find him gone. Barbara might have a heart attack over it. They locked him inside with the other children in one of the schoolrooms. It was a good thing that we had generators and heat to keep them warm. The children were crying and sobbing for their parents and for answers. I wanted to throw open the door and tell them to run.  
“They won’t be mistreated,” Stefan promised me. “I will make certain that Mike is given extra attention. Don’t worry.”  
“How long did you have this scheme planned?” I rounded on him.  
“As soon as you agreed to be Lilith.”  
“What if a member of the coven refuses to turn a child? What happens to both of them?”  
“None will refuse, but if they did, they’d have to watch the child die. We can’t let them go free once they are here. That’s common sense.”  
“Stefan, you know that I don’t agree that we should make child vampires on purpose. What makes you think I would suddenly change my mind on that? Soaking in a tub full of blood?”  
“I know you couldn’t possibly stand to see your Mickey die a second time.”  
I looked at him resentfully, “You would be right about that and I hate you for it!”  
“You are simply afraid to create another vampire. It doesn’t matter if that person is a child or not. That’s why you have always relied on ghouls for a hundred years. Lilith is reticent with her gifts but shouldn’t deny them forever! Don’t you see that we need more vampires in the world? The Council vampires are slowly disappearing to hibernate. They succumb to rotting from the inside or they simply destroy themselves. We are a dying species and we need fresh blood and fresh perspectives. We need less world weariness. We need to preserve the innocence of humans by making them vampires.”  
He was using all of his persuasive power, but as usual, it did nothing to change my mind. I let him think that it did. I nodded my head in mock surrender. I followed him back to our room. I even slipped into the sleeping bag with him, but when I felt the prick of his fangs at my throat, I startled.  
“I don’t want to exchange tonight,” I mumbled, hoping I succeeded in sounding sleepy. When he dragged his fangs along my skin, trying to entice me, I shoved his lips away. “I said no, Stefan!”  
“Still angry with me, I see.”  
I was afraid that he was going to keep egging me on or wait until I was asleep. I didn’t quite trust him anymore. I rose from the blankets and retreated. I knocked on Amon and Hilda’s door and they let me in. We spoke as quietly and carefully as possible.  
“Amon,” I sighed before I forced the words out, “I think we have no choice. We can’t let him do this.”  
“You are right. We are way beyond discussion and debate.”  
“I can’t go back into that room with him.”  
“Then stay here with Hilda. I will guard the door.”  
“You are not going to fight him now, are you?” Hilda was frantic.  
“Should I really wait for him to snatch more children?”  
“He said he wasn’t going to turn them until the blood moon! We have some time!”  
“Maybe I can still get some kind of message to Senenmut or to some of my non-Council friends!” I volunteered. “Yes, those exist!”  
“Unless they are somehow older and more powerful than Stefan, don’t bother. You would be inviting them to their deaths. They wouldn’t’ just have to fight Stefan. Half the coven would be prepared to defend him if some foreign adult vampires show up.”  
“Then it will have to be you, but gather your strength first and catch him a little more unaware,” Hilda said.  
“How am I going to avoid Stefan until then?” I asked.  
“Don’t avoid him after tonight! The last thing we want is for him to suspect you, Alex! If he wants to exchange just tell him that you want to be prepared to turn the little boy. You need every pure drop of blood. He will believe that.”  
“What is the plan if you are killed, Amon?”  
“Hilda, you tell her. I’ll remain outside to keep Stefan and any other eavesdroppers away,” Amon went to do just that.  
“If Amon fails,” Hilda whispered, “we plan to poison Stefan’s blood. I will offer to exchange with him, but I will have massive doses of heparin flowing through me. If you have been denying him, he will be tempted. It might very well kill us both. Heparin affects the blood, even our blood, and will cause him to bleed to death.”  
I drew a shaky breath. We were really plotting to kill Stefan now, not just stop him.  
“Hilda,” I clutched her tight, “Does a part of you wonder if he might still love you?”  
“Stefan?” she let out a bitter laugh. “That mattered to me more than anything in the world many lifetimes ago. It doesn’t now. If he did, it would be his cross to bear. The thought of being with him as we were repulses me.”  
“I don’t know how I feel anymore,” I confessed. “I don’t think I ever knew. There is so much I don’t know. Some Lilith I turned out to be.”  
“You might have been attracted to Stefan and wanted to be with him, but at least he didn’t claw his way into your soul.”  
“I wish we didn’t have to do this. I wish I could release those kids and show Stefan how insane he is. I wish you and Amon could be safe from all this.”  
“You have known Stefan and this coven for less than a year. This has been our nightmare for centuries. Trust me, Alex; we are ready for it to end.”

I awoke the next evening with both Stefan and Amon looming above me. Stefan looked tickled and Amon looked annoyed. Hilda was still fast asleep or at least pretending to be.  
“So this is where you have been!” Stefan chuckled. “With my brother’s wife! I knew they were getting close, but is there something going on between them that we should know about, Amon?”  
“Hilda and I had a scuffle of our own last night. Women love to complain about their men!”  
“The two of you had a fight? That’s not like you at all.”  
“All couples argue. The difference is that Hilda and I always make up.”  
Amon gently shook Hilda awake and pulled her protesting from the blankets. I rose and followed Stefan into the schoolhouse.  
He wanted to show me the new children that had been snatched and to prove again that they were healthy and safe. He was being a good shepherd to his future sheep. I feigned interest, but I honestly didn’t want to look the kids in their eyes. I outright refused to see Mike. If we ever got these children out of here alive, I didn’t want them to recognize me.  
“The blood moon is a few weeks away. Why wait so long to turn them?” I asked. “The longer we wait, the riskier this becomes. After they are turned, there will be missing posters and searches for months and even years later. Some of the new vampires may not appreciate the gift we give. They might try to return home to their human families, expose themselves, or self-destruct. If you want to increase our coven’s numbers, that is fine, but shouldn’t this be a much more gradual and careful process?”  
“Well at least you’re not telling me that I am doing everything wrong as you so love to do.”  
“We agreed that’s my purpose, didn’t we?” I forced a smile.  
“I knew you would eventually come around.”  
“Hilda helped convince me.”  
“Did she?” he sounded surprised.  
“She’s a fine vampiress. Amon is lucky to have her but I don’t understand what she sees in him.”  
I studied Stefan’s face carefully for any sign of emotion or semblance of guilt. There was none.  
“If you are going to insist on ceremony and ritual, then I propose that the entire coven abstain from any sort of exchange until we turn the children,” I announced, trying to sound confident. “That way they aren’t cheated of the precious blood of their Maker. They can mingle their blood with the rest of the coven later. Once they are vampires, their education should be taken with far greater care and time. We are supposed to be creatures of knowledge and wisdom and mankind’s sin was-“  
“Taking those things long before they were ready. Yes. There is no need to remind me.”  
“Are you sure you can abstain from vampire blood for a few weeks?”  
“I can. I’ll need to substitute human blood a bit more, but it is no matter. Can you control your urges?” he asked with defiance.  
“We’ll see,” I grinned at him. “Which one of us went over a century without, huh? Have you ever gone that long?”  
“That’s only because you had no idea what you were missing. Once awakened, it becomes a need for our species.”  
“Wrong. It’s a desire and only a desire, Stefan. My Maker went without nearly his entire existence.”  
“Then he unlocked some sort of secret I have yet to discover.”  
“Maybe I can teach you. Herman managed to safeguard my Maker’s private rituals and commentaries. Vito was younger than you but he fed on ink and knowledge like you feed on blood.”  
“You know it was probably his prolonged self-denial of blood and company that drove him insane? Everyone knows what solitary confinement does to inmates in prisons.”  
I had honestly not considered that before. I criticized Vito for neglecting to feed but I had not accounted for his loneliness. Perhaps if he made more vampire children or found himself a mate, he might have kept his sanity and saved his own life. I clutched his vial at my throat.  
“Going without love is a bit like starving the soul,” I said some of my thoughts aloud.  
“We’ll have to tell the coven about this ban tonight at service. I agree that it is necessary and should be enforced.”  
I sighed with relief. Now I could avoid having to exchange with him and the coven would be spared a little when they lost him. After our usual service, we informed the flock about the ban of exchange. There were groans and looks of disappointment, but no arguments. Hilda and Amon showed their enthusiastic support. I also warned the vampires to be cautious when they hunted. They would all have to ingest more human blood than usual.  
I expected them to kill mercifully and away from the city when possible. I warned them not to overfeed on their ghouls. The twins had made that mistake in the first few days. Stefan had forbidden them anything but ghoul blood and they lost control and drank too deeply and quickly, killing their ghoul accidently.  
It would take at least a few days before foreign blood from other vampires would leave their systems, so Amon had to delay his assassination attempt until then. He wasn’t entirely sure what the best approach would be. Should he try to take Stefan unaware as he slept? He never slept alone. If I left him the night he died, I would come under suspicion. He could try to lure Stefan away to hunt, but then they would risk human witnesses. In the church, he had followers always near. Amon couldn’t be seen with weapons.  
When the time came, the battle would be brutal and personal and would come down to close quarters combat.  
Hilda and Amon sang for the coven one last time. They sang Bist du bei mir, a beautiful German aria as a duet. I had never heard Amon sing without it being drowned out by the rest of the choir and was amazed that he had a seductive tenor voice and, paired with Hilda’s operatic soprano, was marvelous. Hilda and Amon sang directly to each other, never breaking eye contact.  
I realized that they were saying goodbye and this must be the night that Amon had chosen to strike. I wiped blood tears from my face and Stefan laughed at my gush of sentimentality. Instead of being offended, I felt a pang of guilt and terror. I squeezed his hand and kissed it. Part of me wanted to warn him for a flighty moment.  
“Alex, are you shaking?”  
“I’m cold,” I lied and then couldn’t help myself. “Stefan, I love you!”  
I said it with such urgency that I was afraid I had given too much away. Stefan squeezed my hand back and echoed me. When he let go and rose, I wanted to pull him back onto the bench with me. Hilda sat in his place as Amon invited his Maker to climb the bell tower with him.  
Hilda and I waited for them to put some distance between us and then went out into the church yard to observe what we could from below the tower. She must have been feeling exactly what I was feeling. I messaged Gus, informing him that he should race to our location. I would need him very soon either to help me return the human children home or to flee if this all went south.  
Unfortunately we could hear and see little, even with superior senses. Amon and Stefan wore dark clothes and though it wasn’t storming, there was a lot of cloud cover and the nearest street lamp had burned out. We could hear snatches of their conversation. It began with dull small talk. I could guess what Amon had in mind. He wasn’t stupid enough to engage in a monologue about his grudges or talk about revenge. He wanted to catch Stefan off guard and throw him off the tower. Such a fall might be enough to kill a vampire as old as they and if it didn’t, it would render the victim as good as dead.  
“Hilda and I have been fighting more often,” we heard Amon say. “We have never fought like this before.”  
“What about?”  
“The better question is what don’t we fight about? Sometimes I wonder if she still secretly prefers you.”  
“Don’t say that! You know that isn’t true, brother! I was so incredibly happy when you stopped denying your feelings for her and the two of you married. I wanted her turned as much for you as for myself.”  
“Really?” Amon sounded bitter. “Because as I recall, it was you that stopped speaking to us for fifty years, not the other way around as you tell it! We got the sense you were the opposite of happy for us!”  
“We all needed some distance. Tell Hilda I am quite happy with Alex.”  
“I don’t like her spending so much time with Alex. You don’t mind that those two are becoming so close so fast?”  
“I think their friendship is a good thing, Amon. You have always been terribly jealous when it comes to Hilda. Besides, what’s wrong with Alex?”  
“I don’t believe she’s Lilith,” he answered bluntly. “But Hilda and everyone else seem to. It’s another big reason for the strain on my marriage! Remember that Alex committed fratricide? She murdered her human father and didn’t stop her Maker from being burnt! She is a puppet of the Council!”  
Stefan’s voice was muffled by the wind. He was defending me with intensity. If I didn’t know how much of a monster he was and how quickly he had abandoned his previous lovers, I would have swelled with pride and happiness. Everything he said was in my defense, but it sounded hollow and insincere. What Amon said was cruel and disparaging, and yet I knew his words were also insincere. Amon lowered his voice so we could hear less for a while. The wind temporarily died down as any hostility between them did.  
“I am sorry. I know you are right. I should be kinder to Alex. I should give her a chance. I need advice, brother,” Amon said. “How do I win Hilda back?”  
“You’ve always known her mind and moods far better than I.”  
“Still, you are my Maker and spiritual leader. Tell me something.”  
Stefan began quoting scripture from both the Catholic Bible and from the texts of Lilith and Cain. Amon pretended to listen, allowing Stefan to indulge in his favorite subjects and to preach and pretend he was giving good advice and guidance. He was always so self assured and so in love with his own voice.  
“I miss Adela, Stefan. I miss my sister.”  
Bringing up his long dead sister must have been Amon’s fatal mistake. There was no accusing tone in his voice, but Stefan must have sensed his danger. Perhaps his predatory and paranoid nature was too refined.  
When Amon lunged to throw him off the tower, Stefan fought back. The two vampires grappled fiercely, digging nails into whatever flesh they could find, sinking fangs wherever they discovered a place to pierce. I cried out in horror and Hilda began to cry out in mixed terror and pain as soon as they began inflicting wounds. The entire coven poured out into the church yard to see what the hell was happening, wincing with pain. I was the only one spared of it.  
The fight was physically and emotionally draining. Every time Amon landed a blow, he felt it almost as though it was self-inflicted. When Stefan answered his strikes with his own, he felt it too. They tried to drag each other both away and toward the edge. They were almost equally matched in strength and speed. When Stefan swiped at Amon and missed, he crushed brick into fine dust. They might level the tower if they kept that up!  
They moved quickly at first, so fast that it was hard to keep track of who was getting the upper hand, but after several minutes, it was clear that they were becoming exhausted. Their blows were half-hearted and slow but still powerful and deadly. The coven couldn’t run to the aid of their Master because they felt their agony too deeply.  
I cried out to Stefan with a blood curdling scream, but he was not the champion I wanted. He was the champion I got. Finally, Stefan threw Amon over the edge of the tower and it was Hilda that screamed. The sound he made when he hit the hard ground below was sickening. Amon had fallen over a hundred and fifty feet screaming Hilda’s name. She ran to his side despite several others’ attempts to hold her back. I bounded right behind her and no one would dare to try and stop me.  
Amon was alive, but barely. He had been scratched, bitten, and bruised by Stefan’s fangs and nails. There were large gashes where his Maker had tried to pull out organs. The skin at his limbs and sockets had been torn away in an attempt to rip them off as Stefan twisted the skin in opposite directions.  
The fall had probably shattered every bone in Amon’s body and he was incapable of moving. A broken rib was poking through his lung and out of his chest. He had lost too much blood from all of his lacerations to heal and Stefan, though injured critically himself, would no doubt be rushing to finish the total slaughter of his rival.  
Unlike Hilda and the others, I had no empathic blood link, so I could only remember my legs being crushed and briefly being trapped in sunlight and compare that experience of pain to his.  
Hilda clenched her jaw, no doubt biting her tongue to reign in her emotions as she whispered to her dying lover, “Auf Wedersehen, mein geliebter.”  
Amon tried to gasp something in response, but he couldn’t. Hilda shushed to him and let out a deep breath. She motioned to me for help.  
“We must end this or Stefan will do it for us! Help me take his head. Take the rest of his body away. Hide it somewhere before he can desecrate it or destroy it completely!”  
“I will. I’m so sorry, Amon!”  
We used our combined strength to tear his head from his shoulders. The tendons were elastic so it felt like twisting a rubber band with added resistance. Hilda screamed in agony, feeling the sensation of her own head being torn away as we did it. I wasn’t sure if she had the strength to tear flesh and bone on her own even without that terrible distraction.  
Amon seemed to have lost huge quantities of blood, but whatever was left showered us. I could hear the rest of the coven’s screams ringing in my ears and when I looked back at them, many were cradling their heads in their hands. I could hear Stefan crying out in the tower as well. My consolation was that would buy me a little more time.  
Hilda clutched Amon’s severed head as I lifted the rest of his body away, utilizing all of my speed and strength while Stefan took precious time to recover. I wasn’t sure if Amon was quite dead, but his body already felt as though it had instantly gained weight and mass. I tried to find a discreet place but the best that I could think of was the huge dumpsters nearby. I buried him at the bottom and covered him. Hilda and I would have to recover him and properly bury him before the next trash pickup. We didn’t want his corpse taken away and incinerated.  
Stefan had made his slow, meandering way down the bell tower. He looked nearly as bad as Amon. One of his arms had almost been torn off and was dangling by a few sinews. Fritz was a little too enthusiastic to aid his Maker. He clutched at his ankles, shouting that he would offer healing blood. That caused a similar chorus to erupt from his followers. What Stefan really needed was fresh human blood. He had already summoned the ghouls within range.  
There was an interesting display of emotions in each vampire’s eyes when I looked at them. All were absolutely traumatized by what they had witnessed. Their Master and his oldest and most trusted fledgling had turned on each other brutally and now Amon was dead! Only the very oldest of them had seen anything remotely like it before when Adela was buried alive. Amon had never been quite as popular or feared as Stefan, but it was a shock to everyone that it was Hilda his life-long mate that had helped finish him off.  
No one seemed more surprised than Stefan by that fact. His lacerations began to heal and his arm to reattach completely. As he approached Hilda, I crept to his side. She was still cradling her husband’s head. He shot me a glance and realized I had also aided in destroying his enemy.  
“I am so glad you are alive, Stefan!” I threw my arms around him.  
“Where is the body? I want to tear it to pieces!” Stefan was still livid.  
“No need!” Hilda said sharply and offered him the severed head. “This should be enough for you.”  
“Why did you decapitate him, Hilda? I wanted him dead, but I would have never asked you to do it. He turned out to be a back-stabbing traitor, but I know how much you loved him!”  
Hilda’s eyes glowed like emerald gimlets in the dark as she hissed with raw, cutting emotion, “Don’t you remember, Stefan? You were always my first and greatest love.”  
A chill went down my spine at her words and Stefan’s lips parted in renewed surprise. It was eerily silent for a long while. Not even Fritz dared to breathe until Stefan released an audible breath. He reached out and grasped Amon’s head by his dark hair with one hand and gently patted Hilda’s cheek as though she were a child. She forced an adoring look upon him but I noticed her clenching her jaw again when he turned away.  
I expected Stefan to crush Amon’s skull like a pumpkin and to burn what was left, but he carried it into the church with him. I knew I should have followed him and fawned on him like the rest of his worshipers, but I knelt beside Hilda. I had no desire to leave her for him! She stared at the blood on her hands and arms as though there was nothing else in the world. I called her name and she didn’t seem to hear it.  
I dragged her away. It was not long before Gus pulled up to the church in our car. I informed Samuel and Charlotte that I was taking Hilda to my apartment tonight. Stefan could come for us if he needed us. We had committed a terrible act; no matter how much Amon seemed to have earned what we did. Surely his Maker would understand. They actually agreed with me.  
Gus was horrified at the sight of us but asked no questions. Hilda was silent and still in the car. She was unresponsive when we arrived at my home. I took her hand and it was clammy and cold.  
“Gus, start up the shower so that the water will be hot!”I ordered him. “Then please leave us alone.”  
“All alone? Even after sun up?”  
“Yes, please. In fact, I need you to bury a body.”  
“I hate moving bodies!”  
“At least this one doesn’t belong to a human! This is very important! Wait for morning so none of the other vampires will be lurking around and fetch Amon’s body from the dumpster. Take it to a safe place to bury it. Hilda and I didn’t have time to do it or we would have. Treat the body with respect! He was dear to us!”  
I still clutched Hilda’s hand and urged her inside my apartment. She followed blindly where I sat her down on the sofa in my living room. I showered quickly first and changed my clothes, hoping she would snap out of her state when I was through. She hadn’t budged from where I left her.  
I led her toward the shower and splashed some water at her. She didn’t flinch. I coaxed her to take off her clothes to shower and offered her a bathrobe and clothes. She was not exactly my size, but it would do. She made no move to dishevel herself of her clothes and there was still no semblance of life in her eyes.  
I wanted her to cry or scream. I wanted her to smash things, which is probably what I would be doing. I wanted her to blame me for all this or run from me. Anything was better than this lack of emotion.  
“Hilda, talk to me,” I begged her.  
Nothing!  
I made a quick calculation. I ran my hand over her cheek where Stefan’s hand had touched her so callously, utilizing a butterfly-light touch.  
There was a flicker of something in her eyes then. I pulled her gently by her hair so that her lips were at my throat. I felt her breath tickling the fine hairs on my neck for a long time before she bit down. She offered me her wrist.  
We were breaking the rule that no one in the coven should exchange blood, but I thought of Stefan and felt ridiculously rebellious. I was the one that had come up with the rule and I was more than ready to break it. I instinctively knew that what Hilda needed was contact and understanding from another being, any being. She couldn’t be alone like this!  
My own heart was full of grief and maybe it was time to open myself to others. It would help free me even further from Stefan’s psychological hold. It was proof that I didn’t need him and that I could express myself and have meaningful relationships with other vampires.  
I bit into Hilda, her skin so smooth, not like his. I almost jumped away. I tasted not just her, but another’s blood mingled with hers! It could only be Amon! I laughed against her. They had been breaking the ban all this time! Of course they had. They had been prepared for one or both of them to die.  
Hilda showed me bittersweet memories and so many of Amon’s and Hilda’s memories intertwined as they lived such a long life together. I lived the moment that Amon and Stefan found her and turned her. I was there when Stefan told her that she meant nothing. I felt the pain of rejection she felt and then the elation when Amon confessed his true feelings. He had become everything that she had hoped Stefan would be! The years made Amon even better. All that he did was so careful, practiced and loving!  
If there had been a Cain and Lilith in this coven, it was you two. I told her with my blood. Stefan is more like Abel than Cain! Maybe he has been associating himself with the wrong deity all this time!  
He’ll say that this is further proof that he’s Cain. His own brother and son tried to kill him! The coven will paint Amon as Abel because Stefan was clearly just defending himself from an unprovoked attack!  
He probably will. I’m a little envious of what you and your husband had! Thank you for sharing Amon with me, even a little. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to find someone like him someday.  
Your Maker seemed wonderful, she responded. Show me more, Alex! I can’t bear to relive my memories. Show me more of yours!  
You need to clean yourself up first. I know too well a large portion of your pain. I lost my Maker and you are orphaned and feel alone like me. I won’t let you suffer the same loneliness I did. I am here. You need to live for Amon. I won’t let you try to take Stefan down. It’s got to be me. You had to kill your lover. It’s my turn. He ‘loved’ and betrayed us both.  
Alex- she was going to protest.  
How dare you even think about arguing with me! I’m Lilith! I’m a god-damned goddess! Can’t you tell from the taste of my blood? You should be flattered, I told her. You are only the second to exchange blood with me like this!  
She did seem flattered. I felt her joy dancing within my own veins. I tried to fill her head with happy memories and wonderful sights. Then I broke from her and impulsively shoved her into the shower after giving her a smack on her lips, filthy clothes still clinging on.  
Now that we had shared blood, we were sisters in almost every sense. She laughed and I surged with relief at the sound. I hoped I had taken some of the horror, grief, and misery out of her.  
“I’ll be next door in my room,” I told her. “Don’t harm yourself. I need you to help me take that bastard down! I want no more martyrs! I am the one that fed Stefan’s delusions by agreeing to become his Lilith. I let my own feelings blind me. No more!”  
“Oh yes!” her eyes flashed. “Count on it!”  
I walked into my room to see that my cell was vibrating. It was Stefan’s number registering on the screen. I had to answer it.  
“Are you alright?” I asked hysterically. “What the hell happened up there in that tower? Why did Amon try to kill you?”  
“That unwritten rule came back to bite me,” Stefan sounded like he was still in pain from half healed wounds. “Fledglings always hate their Makers. He was a ticking time bomb that I should have disarmed much earlier. Alas, I liked him too much. Eight hundred years is hard to just throw away!”  
“Jesus, I’m so sorry you had to do that! Hilda is beside herself! She knew something was wrong with him!”  
“He told me before he attacked that there was strain between them. This isn’t her fault. Will she be alright?”  
“I’m taking care of her. I might have to keep her here for a few days.”  
“That’s what I was told. I trust you know what to do.”  
“I want to see you,” I lied. “I almost lost you!”  
“We’re protected, Alex. The worst is over. Just wait until after we turn our new members! Be patient. But…”  
He was silent and I didn’t like it, “Stefan?”  
“I do hope that Amon acted alone on this.”  
“I don’t want to think about the implications of that,” I shuddered. “What did you do with Amon’s head?”  
“I’m preserving it in a jar of formaldehyde. I’m sorry, Alex, but I need blood. I still don’t feel well.”  
“Then glut yourself on as much blood as you need. Get better, Stefan. I’ll make sure Hilda gets better. Deal?”  
“Deal.”  
He hung up and Hilda knocked on the door. She looked around the room after I invited her in. My gown was a little long on her because I was taller than her. Her curly blonde hair was damp. She seemed to appreciate sleeping in a real bed. I placed a pillow between us but held her hand.  
“Why do you think he has decided to keep Amon’s head intact?” I asked since there was no way she had not heard my whole conversation with Stefan.  
“To be an example to anyone else in the coven that might have ideas,” she recited a list. “To remind himself of his victory and stroke his ego. To make Amon suffer if he were to somehow regenerate a headless corpse and overall to be an utter asshole.”  
“Hilda, I am going to have to practice with the heparin. I’ll need you to inject and treat me.”  
“It’s going to be a pretty insufferable experience.”  
“I don’t care.”  
“We’re going to need a lot of blood and a way to procure illegal quantities of the drug.”  
“I can manage. In fact, it will be easier to get a hold of that then the deed to the church!”  
“Why is the mortal world that way?”  
I sighed, “I have no idea.”

The next evening, Gus texted me the location of Amon’s body, safely buried. That was vital to Hilda’s peace of mind. I hunted to maximize my strength and endurance and gathered the ingredients we needed thanks to the black market. They were chiefly medical supplies, not hard drugs, but still, it was a ridiculous list. There was the heparin, its anti-agent protamine sulfate, bags of donor blood, needles, restraining equipment, and a piece of leather for me to bite into to muffle my screams.  
My apartment was already as sound proof and secure as possible. I was prepared to be attacked in my lair since I was a Guardian and possibly had enemies somewhere in or around the city at one time or another. Several ghouls had come to provide the much needed blood I would require for this crazy practice of mine. The donor blood would certainly not be enough.  
There was Gus, Hilda’s ghoul, Amon’s orphaned ghoul, and half a dozen others from our secretive allies among the coven. I thought it wise not to know which ghoul belonged to whom in case Stefan gleaned information from my blood in our final exchange. Luckily I had never paid attention to that sort of thing and the faces and names of the ghouls changed daily.  
Hilda placed me in the restraints and prepared me for a dose. The exact amount was a crapshoot at best. In theory, I should be able to handle a massive dose that would normally kill a mortal. We simply wouldn’t know until we attempted an experiment. She had a double deadly dose. I wished that Sunako was in the room with us. That vampiress seemed to know an excessive amount about tortures and techniques such as this. She knew exactly when to stop draining my blood.  
Instead, Hilda and the ghouls in the room that happened to know anything about the medical world was all I had available. These trials might kill me before I even got near Stefan.  
“What do the medical books say is the point of no return for me?”  
“Well, since you have no heart beat, I’m going to have to guess that it would be when your skin starts to turn blue.”  
“I’m going to be turning blue?” I groaned.  
“If you don’t bleed to death first, yes.”  
“Joy!” I scrunched my face in anticipation. “Someone get out a fucking stop watch!”  
We had three people with timers to be sure. Hilda kissed my brow and inserted the needle in my upper arm. It was such a dose that I began to feel its effects pretty quickly. I started to feel incredibly anxious as my skin began to bruise near the injection site. Next there was nausea and my nose began to bleed. At the sight, Gus and Hilda looked alarmed. She was already preparing the anti-agent but I told her not to administer it yet.  
“You could go into shock very quickly, you know!” she snapped.  
“Wait until I change color!”  
“I might not wait for that if you are unconscious!”  
I gritted my teeth as I felt the pain a vampire feels at a disturbance in their blood. I could feel my blood trying to clot and my veins constricting and in some cases dissolving. I began to shake and blood tears, or were they tears, poured from my eyes. I felt warm trickling liquid in my ears. It must also be blood. What on earth else could it be? I began to squirm against my restraints.  
“Give me that leather,” I instructed and bit down on it hard. It did very little good. I began to vomit blood and cried out, “Oh mein Gott! Mon Dieu! My God!”  
The experience was so much worse than being drained. The only thing worse was that brief minute I felt as Vito burned alive and every second was getting dangerously close to that sensation! Bruises were spreading all over my skin. I guess I really was turning blue! I was unconscious by the time Hilda started the treatment against the overdose. When I came to, I felt too incredibly weak or queasy to move. Hilda was stroking my hair and I was hooked up to an IV of blood. My eyelids felt as though they were lined with lead.  
We repeated the procedure as soon as I was cleared to attempt it again. The time before I passed out, went into shock, or turned blue improved. The pain was no less. I insisted we had to do it a third time. We didn’t have all the resources to keep going at it, however, and the blood moon was too close. 

I entered the chapel, trying hard not to show any outward sign of the pain I was in. I knew I only had a few minutes before my nose would begin to bleed and signal the alarm bells to anyone with eyes. All of my practice might have bought me some more time, but I really didn’t know. I just knew that I couldn’t fail. If I did, Stefan would exact revenge upon Hilda and his followers and he would turn all the children of Chicago that he had kidnapped, including Mike. Too many vampire lives and human lives were at stake.  
Stefan was prostrating himself and I was reminded sharply of my Maker. He had always kept a crucifix in our home and if he had ever had to choose any particular spirituality, it would have been the Jesuit belief system. Stefan wore the red robes of a priest of Cain and was praying in his native German to himself, I supposed. If he truly believed that he was Cain and that I was Lilith, he was worshiping ego and not trying to elevate himself to a higher plane like he claimed.  
It was the ritual, the manner, the bent head of hair with its shades of red that made me think of Vito. When Stefan looked at me and spoke, I thought of Mickey, not as he had been when I killed him, not as a young man. Instead, I thought of the child that had been my friend. It was the blue eyes, the foreign accent, and the child form and voice that drummed up images of the Russian boy.  
“Alex? You aren’t wearing the robes of Lilith,” Stefan said reproachfully. “You said that you were going to take this all seriously from now on.”  
“I didn’t come to pray,” I answered, trying not to force my words because everything hurt.  
“Then why?”  
“I needed to speak to you. That seemed a little more urgent than worrying about wearing the right clothes. You think I might have had something to do with Amon’s plot to kill you.”  
“No. I already told you that I trust you.”  
“I don’t want there to be any doubts! My blood will tell you the truth, once and for all. Honestly, I don’t trust myself! There are things you need to answer for as well. There is something that one of your followers told me.”  
“What’s that?” his voice became acid.  
“That I am not the first girl that you have declared to be Lilith.”  
Stefan knocked over a brazier as his temper flared. I didn’t flinch at his display and I was honestly curious how he would respond to this declaration. I bit my lip and tried not to tremble in pain as Stefan fumed and demanded to know who revealed this and what else they said. He made threats and cursed. I didn’t have time for that. I knew I would start bleeding any second.  
“The point is, Stefan, that you and I have reasons to doubt each other. We need to exchange. That will answer both our questions. No holding back this time, either. Show me everything and I will do the same.”  
I put my lips to his just as Judas had done to betray Jesus. Oh well, I thought. Stefan had betrayed me first. There was nothing else biblical about this. That’s what I told myself to ease my conscience. My tongue darted out just as he opened his lips to accept it. The open mouth kiss, a kiss exchanged between lovers to express the next level of intimacy and trust. It was something that had repulsed me whenever I saw it on the silver screen as a child and scoffed at as a vampire for so long. I didn’t feel that way now. I had scraped my tongue with my fangs so that there was blood in the kiss. I knew that once Stefan tasted that sample, he would be utterly unable to resist an exchange with me now. I had already won.  
He offered me his wrist and I didn’t hesitate. I broke the kiss so that I could chomp into his artery. He went for his favorite spot, the hollow between my collar bones. He might like to begin feeding there, but it wasn’t efficient. He needed a massive amount of blood as soon as possible. We had done this so many times by now. I guided his lips toward my jugular, his teeth scraping along the way and leaving a trail of blood and broken skin. That was nothing compared to the internal bleeding and injury I felt. When his fangs sank in, I let out my agony a little at last. I began to slump.  
Stefan held me up, mistaking the cry for passion, not pain. I saw the blood trickling from his nose first, and then felt blood trickling from mine. Victory sang in my veins as I tried to drain Stefan quickly of every last healthy drop of blood in his body as my poisoned blood replaced it. Even if the blood songs hadn’t tipped him off, the blood coming from not just his nose now, but his eyes and ears, made it more than obvious. I felt his rage, his fear, his deep hurt. I expected him to crush me or snap my neck. He had been nothing but vengeful to everyone else in the past.  
What have you done, Alex! His blood transferred the thought.  
What I had to do.  
You’ve killed us!  
Maybe it’s what we deserve.  
He tried to drain me. Instead of fighting, I pulled him closer, encouraging him. I stopped drinking from him. Spots were in front of my eyes. I felt icy cold and numb everywhere but within the pit of my stomach. I felt a terrible queasiness there. I sensed him weakening, his fangs slipping. I tried to hold him there at my artery. I needed him to take every drop. I was terrified that even the high doses of heparin wouldn’t be enough to take this powerful vampire down.  
“Do it, Stefan!” I shouted with my voice and blood. “Take me down with you! I want you to do it!”  
At the last possible second, I fell backward. He had no strength to hold me or latch his fangs. I stuffed the vial of Vito’s blood mixed with the anti-agent between my teeth, clenched down, and I heard and felt the glass shatter. The old, familiar rusty taste of my Maker filled my mouth. I hadn’t tasted him since the 1930’s. A surge of sadness went through me because I knew it would also be my last. There were no other sources of Vito’s blood. The shards of glass expelled themselves through my cheeks painfully and my veins were crying out for fresh blood. Vito’s blood had saved me in the moment, but I would die very soon without better sustenance. I sent out my summons to Gus. Hopefully he would make it in time. If not him, Hilda and one of her ghouls might make it.  
I heard Stefan gasping and couldn’t help myself. I crawled until I lay facing him. Blood was coming out of his every orifice, and instead of feeling satisfied or happy, I was choking on compassion and a little regret. Part of me still loved this vampire child, this monster, this fallen and abandoned angel. I gripped his hand in my own and tried not to cry. I needed every drop of blood and couldn’t afford to waste what little I had on tears. I refused to blink as I watched Stefan slowly bleeding to death. No one would come to his aid. Hilda and the others would make certain of it.  
“This wasn’t supposed to happen!” he said. “It’s not fair! Don’t you understand, Alex? I have been around since the Crusades! Of course I told other girls that they must be Lilith! I wanted somebody to be my Lilith! It was too hard and lonely waiting for you all those centuries and it took another century to find you when you did arrive!”  
“I am not Lilith and you are not Cain, Stefan. I was angry and jealous at first, I admit that, but now I am angrier for those others: For the failed Liliths that you either used and discarded or even destroyed. Any one of them could have been your Lilith. You just chose not to be happy. You expected them to be goddesses and to make you a god. If I were truly Lilith, I could have stopped you without resorting to this! The real Lilith would be able to save her Cain!”  
“I am going to Hell now, aren’t I? Or worse, there will be nothing and no one to love me or hate me.”  
I crawled on top of him and stared directly into his eyes as I said, “In the name of all things sacred and holy, I forgive you, Stefan. Maybe I can’t forgive the actions you took trying to be Cain, but I can forgive the little boy you were and must be still. Go find your Jerusalem, the one in heaven, not the failed Jerusalem here on earth. Go to your personal paradise. I don’t want to see anyone in Hell. Maybe you’ll forgive me someday for this.”  
“I still believe you are Lilith! Your Maker believed it too. I wish you could believe it yourself. Maybe I’m not Cain, but I never doubted you. I never did.”  
He fell silent and I began to recite the Lord’s Prayer in his language as I closed his eyes. I couldn’t stop the blood tears from flowing and might have cried myself to death if Gus hadn’t arrived. He pressed me to him, but I wasn’t thinking of blood. He had to insist several times before I began to drink. I wanted to die with my Cain for a few self-destructive moments.  
“He’s gone, then?” Hilda and the others entered the chapel.  
“Yes,” Gus answered for me.  
The coven and I were too distressed to do much of anything immediately. Amon’s death had been bad enough, but now their leader and god was lying motionless and lifeless on the floor of the church. The ghouls knew what to do. They took the body and cremated Stefan. Hilda asked if I had strength or desire to hunt. When I refused, she made me drink from her ghoul. The rest of the coven extended the same courtesy. They offered their own blood. Many blessed me and thanked me. Some of them still shared Stefan’s unwavering belief that I was Lilith. A few kept their distance, the few that still supported their Cain in all other things. I tried not to glare back at them.  
“Don’t scatter Stefan’s ashes!” I told Hilda. “Not yet. I want to take them to Jerusalem. I’ll scatter them there.”  
“Do you know how hard it is to get into that place, even for a vampire?”  
“I owe it to him!”  
Hilda could see that this was not something that I was going to give on. After the body was turned to ash, she gave me the urn, plain and unadorned.  
“Have all the children been released? The human kids?” I asked.  
“Yes. We had a ghoul drop them all off in front of a hospital. Mike was among them, so don’t worry about your ward. None of them were harmed, you know that. Stefan wanted them to become us not serve as food or be abused.”  
“I know.”  
“So than what’s going to happen to us?” Hilda asked with apprehension.  
“Senenmut and the Council will decide that,” I sighed. “I know for a fact though that you can’t remain here in Chicago, especially not after Stefan kidnapped so many kids. That stunt attracted national attention! The children are all young and will tell their parents crazy and terrible things. The media will blame it on satanic occultism. It’s not too far from the mark, I guess. No one will believe it was vampires unless we get really sloppy. Stefan really was going insane! He wanted to repeat this cycle every ten years!“  
“Only his truly blind followers didn’t see how far gone he was. I suppose the Council will destroy us all.”  
“No. My Grand-Maker spared me. I suspect he’ll watch some of you with your ghouls for a long time. He will ask me for notes and recommendations about each individual. He may adopt out some of the very young vampires to Elders. One or two might be destroyed, but I hope not.”  
“Cult-conditioning does tend to fade once its leader is gone.”  
“Yes. Or they will see Senenmut and realize that a being that’s three thousand years old is much more impressive than Stefan’s paltry eight hundred. He is closer to Cain or a god. I just don’t want anyone to look to me!”  
Hilda smiled, “No, after all, you only did exactly what Lilith might have done in your situation. Thank you, Alex. Really. You have saved a lot of lives.”  
“I did what I had to do.”  
“If you say so.”  
“How are the other members of the coven?” I asked with concern. “None of them died or were critically injured from Stefan’s death throes, were they?”  
“Fritz had the worst of it. He was the last direct fledgling that Stefan made and he was far too small and young. He was bleeding from his nose, eyes and ears so much I was afraid we would lose him. I thought he was having a sort of brain hemorrhage. The rest of us got lucky and only had nosebleeds and headaches. He hasn’t spoken a word. I’m hoping that’s not a sign of some sort of irreparable damage.”  
“I hope so too. I’m certain he hates me now.”  
“He will learn, in time, to appreciate what you have done. I have one last thing to do myself. I need to finish burying Amon. Will you tell me the exact spot where you buried his body? I must fetch his head.”  
Hilda undertook the grisly task and returned covered in soil and soot but looking strangely happy. She pulled me to her and threw her arms around me.  
“You aren’t going to believe this!” she sobbed in my ear.  
“What?” I whispered back.  
“When I opened the grave, Amon was lying there exactly as he had been the day he was killed. There was no sign of decay. As if that wasn’t enough of a shock, when I laid his head near his severed neck, it reattached itself!”  
“Oh my god, Hilda!” I gasped. “That’s the most amazing news!”  
“I know! I-I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! I thought for a moment his eyes were going to flutter open and he would start climbing out of the earth, but he remained there. It’s got to be a good sign! Do you know if it’s true that we can regenerate and walk the earth again like the rumors say?”  
“There is no official record of it happening in the Library,” I answered, “but both my Maker and Grand-Maker said it is entirely possible. Just because it wasn’t written down with the signatures of twelve witnesses doesn’t mean that it hasn’t happened. Senenmut has hinted to me that ancient vampires have been sighted now and again after they had been missing hundreds or thousands of years. Mortals may have witnessed bodies leaving their graves in the Stone Age and inspired all those ancient beliefs that the human body must remain intact, not necessarily in hopes of an afterlife, but a resurrection of the body in this life because it happens to us! It’s the reason why the Council demands incineration of criminals. It’s actually a good thing that Stefan decided to preserve Amon’s head. He very well could rise again and now that it’s been reattached to his body, he won’t have to drown over and over again in embalming fluid like Stefan would have wanted.”  
Hilda sobbed again, “You are telling me there’s a chance I might have my Amon back?”  
My eyes rimmed with tears, her happiness infectious, “Yes! I pray with all my heart and soul that it does happen, Hilda! You deserve to be reunited! Now I’m doubly glad that I didn’t let you take the heparin!”  
“Alex, do you think the Council would let me stay here? I don’t want to leave the city if Amon-if he-if he-“  
“I’ll beg Senenmut if I have to! I don’t want you to ever leave! You’re my sister now, Hilda!”

Epilogue  
Senenmut continued to scrawl notes in short-hand hieroglyphs as Alex recounted the whole story for the hundredth time. The scribe insisted on hand-writing copies. He hated fax and copy machines and his hands moved so fast that he was actually more efficient. He made the young vampiress repeat the story in case there were any changes to it or details that she had previously forgotten or spoken out of context.  
Alex stared at his long and bony fingers as they flew, wondering how on earth he managed to keep his skin so dark after all of the years of being a vampire. Once she finished, her voice cracking and failing from overuse, Senenmut announced his judgments.  
“You reacted better than I could have possibly dreamed to the crisis you were faced with, Alex. If you had contacted me sooner, many more would have certainly died. I would not have tolerated Stefan for one second and would have come down on his pathetic coven with an iron fist.”  
“Now what?” she said wearily.  
“Hilda may remain here as you have requested. The rest of the coven, however, must return to Germany. They will be carefully watched, just as you were. I trust them far less, though. That monstrous little boy Fritz gave me nothing but evil vibes when I studied him. I’m not convinced he should be spared at all. Some of the others show some promise, however. A new Guardian of Berlin is sorely needed. Perhaps one of them will prove they have half the resourcefulness you do and we will have a second child overseeing a large and important city.”  
“If she didn’t already say she wanted to stay, I would suggest Hilda. I suppose the next best thing would be someone like Samuel or Charlotte.”  
“I will take your words into consideration.”  
Senenmut rose from the floor where he had been sitting cross-legged to write and approached her. He was dressed in casual shoes, slacks, and a maroon, tailor-made buttoned shirt.  
He gathered up Alex’s long red hair in one hand and pulled it away from her neck and shoulders. She wondered for a split second if he was going to feed. Instead, he produced jewelry from his pocket that he placed immediately around her neck before she could catch a glimpse of it. Then he let the curtain of her hair drop loose again and graced her with a gentle smile. She clutched the necklace within her hands as she studied it.  
It was a fresh vial of blood, but it was not her Maker’s blood. It could only be his. The vial had a gold stopper shaped into an Egyptian ankh and Alex’s name was etched into the reinforced glass as cartouches. It was so beautiful and such a grand gesture that she could only stare in bewilderment back at him. He did not appear to expect or desire gratitude. After that ghost of a smile, he showed no sign that any sort of gift exchange had occurred.  
“Do you have an updated passport, Alex?” he asked.  
“Of course.”  
“Find it. You will need it. You and I are going on a trip.”  
“A trip? But my responsibilities-“  
“Are to be temporarily assigned to Hilda. She already volunteered to do it. No, this is not something you can refuse. You want to scatter the ashes of your former friend and lover in Jerusalem. I can grant you access. After that, I have decided it’s time to revisit my homeland and you are coming with me. You have earned a vacation, Alex, and I believe it is time that I told you my entire story.”  
The gift, along with this promise, was like a dream come true. He was also dead accurate that after everything that had happened, she needed this. She was ready to board a ship or plane again and to be a citizen of the world. She was glad to be in the presence of my Grand-Maker, and she couldn’t wait to see the pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx with her vampire eyes.


End file.
